


Days of Innocence

by Hagar



Series: Stubborn, Silent and Grey [7]
Category: NCIS: Los Angeles
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Background Tony DiNozzo, Case Fic, Gen, Human Intelligence, Inspired by Real Events, Israel, Israeli Characters, Novella, Original Character(s), Refugees, Sinai Peninsula, Terrorists, Undocumented Migrants, Who killed Eli David?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-19 21:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2403062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar/pseuds/Hagar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terrorists and refugees are a bad combination. Terrorists, teenagers and Sam are an even worse combination, and that’s not the only problem’s G got.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Remember Some Details

**Author's Note:**

> This story is concurrent with [A Lighter Shade of Grey](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1118599), and has some references to it. No knowledge of the events of LSoG is necessary. However, if you're unfamiliar with the events of [Small Joys](http://archiveofourown.org/works/398234) (and, to a lesser degree, [Safe & Sound](http://archiveofourown.org/works/744401)) you're going to be thoroughly lost.
> 
> Readers familiar with the undocumented migrants situation in Israel will recognize where I simplified the custodial situation; this simplification is deliberate, as the relevant facilities are all almost literally across the road of each other. On September 22, 2014, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled (for the second time) that the open-ended detainment of undocumented migrants cannot be made legal, and kindly asked the government to not try and pass this law a third time.
> 
> The beta team consisted of IShouldBeWriting, Lovechilde and N. Thanks y’all! Additional thanks to Y., who told me about his experience with the asylum-seekers community in Israel.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 _“Better to live in the past then in a moment unwanted_  
_Listen closely,[try to remember some details](http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/yehuda_amichai/poems/65)_  
_A little compassion never killed anyone.”_  
\- [Live Well](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzAAJx6k8h8), Rona Kenan

 

* * *

 

_Thursday, August 15, 17:15_

 

Dance music blared through the small apartment. Everyone in the building could hear it, Yael knew. The people in the next building over could hear it, too. No one ever complained, though. Everybody knew that dance music on a Thursday afternoon meant somebody was revving themselves up for a weekly bout of thorough cleaning. It was loud. It was also nostalgic, bringing back memories of regular service painted in warm tones by the passage of years.

Memory wasn’t involved for the half-dozen young people shouting at each other across the apartment. They were _sadirnikim,_ still in their mandatory service. They'd been loaned out immediately after basic and hadn’t worn a uniform since: they’d never had the chance to learn how to _be_ soldiers.

It was nice, working out of a facility that had so many of them. Among other things, they made what could’ve been a chore into a comfort. She was tidying up her office when her desk phone rang.

“Dunski.”

“Taub,” the man on the other end identified. “Team Rosey called. The circus is a go.”

Yael thanked him, and they both hung up. She went back to dusting the shelves as if the message meant nothing. Possible physical responses presented themselves, but she was alone in her own office, and had no need to act on any of them.

 _Rosey is My Relative_ was a book. Yael hadn’t held it in her hand since she’d been a child, but she could still see the cover in her mind’s eye: a drunken elephant balancing on an empty bottle, a _tarboosh_ on her head. Rosey was an elephant, and _Team Rosey_ was a good code name for people who hunted poachers for a living. In Africa, elephants needed security as much as people did. It wasn’t just a frivolity or a mere ecological concern. Like drug trafficking, poaching funded terrorism. Mostly, the people of Mokili Security brought home information. This time, though, they were bringing a person.

 _The circus is a go._ And it was indeed going to be a circus when -

The desk phone rang again.

 _Five o’clock on the fifth day,_ Yael thought. Years ago the words had the bite of sarcasm to them, but after fourteen years in the Community they were just a statement of fact: it was five in the afternoon on a Thursday, the fifth and last workday of the week, and Thursday afternoon was when the hottest fires always started.

“Dunski.”

Her direct supervisor didn’t bother identifying himself. “Have plans for the weekend?”

“I do now.”

“Check your inbox. And please don’t write any _interesting_ reports this time.”

She reached for the computer mouse and refreshed her inbox.

Two words caught her eye first. One was “Sinai”. The other was the name of the agency she’d be liaising with.

So _that_ was the reason for the sarcasm.

She sat down and started going through the files in an orderly fashion.

Sinai was a hot issue. The IDF was holding the border and the construction of the [barrier ](http://msc.wcdn.co.il/w/w-700/1487712-5.jpg)was progressing nicely, but to rely on defense and fortification alone was asking for a bad surprise down the road. There’d been a lot or arguments about which agency should assume responsibility for the peninsula. It was a near-border space, which made it the jurisdiction of the IDF’s human intelligence unit. Her old unit wasn’t particularly keen on the job: they had more than enough work already and besides, the Sinai problem was made of equal parts Bedouins and Gazans. Unit 1391 didn’t otherwise deal with either of those populations; that was a stronger argument than Sinai being near-border. The Bedouins were everyone’s problem except Unit 1391, as the same tribes stretched from Israel’s Negev desert all the way west to Morocco. Gaza was the Shin-Beit’s problem still, despite the [Disengagement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaza) eight years before; Hamas was still Hamas. And so it was that the Arab Division found itself with a brand-new desk.

The Sinai Desk was not going to appreciate this surprise.

Making the relevant sector officer her first call might help with that. The second call would have to be to the Interrogation Department, telling them to lay off this one; then - explain the situation to Shoshi, who was the US Embassy’s favorite, and let her handle that problem; she should grab another one of the kids to deal with the rest of the logistics while she was getting Shoshi; then call Rimon’s operations officer. The desert _sayeret_ could probably shave a few days off this op. There’d be bureaucracy to handle, but the Sinai sector officer could deal with that once Yael would secure the cooperation.

And once the operational concerns had been met, she should call Aunt Ilana, who would most definitely want to know about this. And when she got home -

When she got home, Yael could email Tony to let him know that Ziva had been in the Central African Republic, because in a few days’ time Ziva would no longer be there but rather on a plane to Israel.

 

* * *

 

_Friday, August 16, 09:45_

 

The Egyptian side of the Taba Gateway had [pretty landscaping](http://www.globosapiens.net/data/gallery/eg/pictures_468/egypt--janob-sna--60149.jpg). After a week in Sinai, the green of the plants and the hot pink of the bougainvillea came as a shock. The Sinai Peninsula was just as pretty as the tourist brochures had promised - only good thing about this job so far - but a desert was still a desert.

The terminal was predictably deserted. The border control clerks fussed and fawned over the single traveler, the highlight of their day, before they let him go into the small stretch of sand between the Egyptian and the Israeli terminals.

G Callen shaded his eyes with his hand and [looked down the road](http://geosite.jankrogh.com/borders/egil/SSL12536_small.jpg), considering [the Israeli Taba Border Pass](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Tabaterminal1.jpg). It was a simpler structure than its Egyptian counterpart, and had no vegetation to speak of. It didn’t seem particularly welcoming. Maybe it looked better on the other side - but he wouldn’t know until he got there.

It was only a 150 yards, but the temperature was well over a hundred degrees. The humidity was mercifully low but still, G let himself sigh and visibly relax his shoulder when he stepped into an air-conditioned space again.

For all that it sported an actual Duty Free store, the Israeli terminal was just as utilitarian on the inside as it was on the outside .

Now came the part that G didn’t like. When Sam had been embedded with this terrorist group weeks before and several countries to the south, they had no idea that the trail would lead to Sinai, and they definitely didn’t know that this group would attempt to cross into Israel. The passport G had on him had several stamps that could get him into serious trouble with Israeli border control. Eric was supposed to have talked to the Israelis, but G wouldn’t know how this was going to go until he approached the clerk.

The woman busied herself with the computer long enough that G was beginning to worry. His worry intensified as he spotted a man in security uniform - dark cargo vest bearing the Israeli Airport Authority’s logo, T-shirt and cargo pants.

The clerk handed G his alias’ passport and motioned him forward without saying a word.

The security guy was waiting for him just on the other side of the booth. G gave him one of his best smiles. “Hi -”

The guard cut him off. “Come with me, please.”

The words could potentially mean trouble, but the guard’s body language didn’t look like it. G followed him out the front door on the Israeli side.

A young man who had been leaning against the wall having a smoke looked at them, then stubbed out his cigarette and approached.

The guard nodded at both of them, and left.

“You my ride?” G asked.

“That depends. I’m Bentzi.” He held out his hand.

G took it, and gave his alias. “Andrew Kallish.”

And yes, this was his ride: this college-aged kid in a muscle shirt and swim trunks, driving a white [light commercial](http://www.hcars.co.il/photos/23779/%D7%A8%D7%A0%D7%95%20%D7%A7%D7%A0%D7%92%D7%95%2001.JPG) vehicle that wasn’t anywhere near as dusty as it should’ve been.

Bentzi turned out to be not much of a talker. That was just fine by G. They drove through [Eilat](http://www.mapisrael.info/sites/www.mapisrael.info/files/field/image/eilat.jpg) in silence. The resort town looked rather like G expected it to: resort towns usually looked a lot like one another. However, Bentzi didn’t turn into the Eilat Airport once they passed the town but instead continued up the mountains.

Eilat was almost a 150 miles from the nearest settlement bigger than a kibbutz, and over 200 miles from Tel Aviv. That was half the country; if they were going to drive all that way he was going to demand a food break the first chance he got - but he doubted that would be the case. It was a little-known fact that Israel had a second international airport, [Uvda](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Ovda_Airport.jpg). Adjacent to an airbase bearing the same name, the civilian strip at Uvda was rarely used. It saw traffic when flights had to be redirected for some reason or, sometimes, in the tourist season, catering to planes too big for Eilat Airport. And August was high tourist season in Eilat.

Forty minutes later G discovered that they were indeed headed to Uvda, but not the airport: Bentzi drove the car straight to the [airbase](http://2006.uploaded.fresh.co.il/2006/12/04/46459060.jpg)’s gate.

They got through the gate without a hitch. _Always nice to be expected._ The small residential area was near the gate; G recognized the US Army Corps of Engineering’s style of building. Beyond that, the base seemed like an endless stretch of desert, regularly interrupted by featureless mounds. _Underground hangars._ Nothing to see here; the IAF wouldn’t be hosting foreign guests at Uvda if there was.

Bentzi got G as far as the edge of the tarmac. There they were met by a teenager in a technician’s coveralls on a Mule who didn’t bother offering his name - or asking for G’s. It was a short but unpleasantly hot ride to the hangar where G’s ride was waiting. The plane in the hangar was tiny. Between that and its odd, rounded shape, it looked more like a toy than like something that could actually fly.

“You have got to be kidding me,” G said to no one in particular.

A man reading a newspaper raised his head, and G realized his mistake. This man was older - grad student instead of a college kid, _maybe_ \- and his coveralls were different: this was the pilot.

And G had just insulted their ride. Great.

“Ata hanose’aa?” the pilot asked.

G stopped himself from blinking. He had basic conversational Hebrew nowadays and Hetty knew that -

 _Are you the passenger?_ He’d just been asked

“Ken,” G acknowledged. _Yes._

The pilot put the newspaper away and raised his voice slightly, catching the mechanics’ attention. “Az yalla, zazim.”

_Then let’s go._

 

* * *

 

**Figure 1:** Nekhel to Uvda - map

 

* * *

 

_12:10_

 

Like Uvda, [Sde Dov Airport](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Tel-Aviv-View.jpg/1280px-Tel-Aviv-View.jpg) was both a civilian field and a military base. There were two differences. One, Sde Dov was a thriving and active civilian field. Two, it was just [across the Yarqon](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Tel_Aviv_Port_Lowshot.jpg/1280px-Tel_Aviv_Port_Lowshot.jpg) from the [Tel Aviv Port](http://www.namal.co.il/en/default.aspx). Just like at Uvda, though, G was driven to the gate without a word and without any idea what he should expect.

It occurred to him that he _should_ have expected the woman who was sitting at one of the picnic tables just outside the base gate. The huge Audrey Hepburn sunglasses didn’t make her any less recognizable.

“Remind me of your name again?” he asked, pouring as much sarcasm into it as he could.

She smiled. Of course she did. “Yael. Now come on, your lunch’s getting cold.”

“I hate you,” he reminded her.

“I got you whole apple juice, too.”

“That’s not going to make Sam stop hating you, either.”

“I’ll be satisfied with you not being grouchy because you haven’t eaten since six in the morning.”

“Seven, actually,” he said as they got in the car, a white sedan. “And I still hate you.” He maybe hated her a little more because the goat cheese sandwich smelled great, the bag of fries was still hot, and the juice still cold. Then again, Dunski probably had minute-by-minute reports on his location since he checked through passport control. “Advantage of not flying commercial,” he said.

“There’s always someone flying that line,” she replied.

Given air force bases in two fun cities and tiny planes… Yeah, he could see how that would work. It probably cost less to fly one of those toy-planes from Tel Aviv to Uvda then it did to drive. Of course there would always be someone flying that line.

“So, where we headed?” he asked. “Because no hotel is going to like the look of my passport.” And there couldn’t possibly be a new ID package waiting for him at the embassy already.

“That’s not going to be a problem.”

“I am _not_ living in one of your safehouses.” A Shin-Beit safehouse was the less-scary option. These were _Israelis_ ; they might’ve put him up in someone’s house, for all he knew.

“Tourist rental.”

Which was still going to be bugged to hell and back, but that was par for the course when you were foreign Intel staying in Israel.

“Any idea when they’re going to cross?” he asked. He’d been out of contact with everyone since - well, seven in the morning.

“If they don’t cross tonight, Rimon will pick them up tomorrow.”

 _Rimon_ was a Hebrew word that meant a pomegranate or, alternatively, a hand grenade. It was also the name of a voice academy and a Special Forces unit. Once upon a time in the 1970s, Rimon had been [Meir Dagan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meir_Dagan)’s band of bandits. That Rimon had been long disbanded. The new Rimon, founded in 2010, was dedicated to [desert warfare](http://img.mako.co.il/2014/03/04/rimonTMR_1_c.jpg).

“If I asked if you’re supposed to operate in Sinai, you’d say something about fish, wouldn’t you,” he said, very carefully. When she didn’t reply, he added: “So long as we’re not starting a war, here.”

That wasn’t likely, though. It was entirely possible that the Egyptian regime hated the Salafi even more than Israel did and anyway, that was a moot point. Any unit that Israel called _Special Forces_ wasn’t going to get caught.

It wasn’t a long drive but by the time Dunski stopped the car - blocking the narrow one-way road - he’d vacuumed the food. His hand was already on the door when Yael said: “You’re invited to dinner.” He turned to glare at her. Before he could say anything, she added: “Aunt Ilana will be disappointed if you don’t show up.”

Ilana was Dunski’s aunt who had worked with Hetty in the 1980s. Which meant that yes, he’d just been invited to the Jewish equivalent of Sunday dinner and no, he wasn’t getting out of it.

“Anything else I should know about?”

“I’ll pick you up at six-thirty.”

 

* * *

 

_12:30_

 

It was a [narrow one-way street](http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz80/hagar972/Fic%20Things/TelAvivone-waystreetnearDizengofftoupload_zpsb89cb6c3.png). Cars were parked on both sides of the road, bikes padlocked to the low fences. The buildings were two to four stories tall, a mix of Tel Aviv’s famed Bauhaus style and something that reminded G more of Eastern Europe. Some buildings hadn’t been touched since they were built, but others had been renovated. The building G entered seemed as if it’d been renovated a few years ago. It had an elevator - definitely a late addition to the original structure - but G didn’t bother taking it to the third floor.

The keys in his hand had the rental company’s logo dangling off it. Maybe it was a real company, maybe it was a Shin-Beit shell; G had no way to know. He made a mental note to ask Eric about it, and also whether metal doors with heavy-duty locks were a normal feature of Israeli urban buildings.

They probably were. After all, fortified shelters were part of Israeli building standards. Israel had some of the lowest crime rates in the Western world, but _crime_ wasn’t what made Israelis worry.

The apartment he stepped into was nice. G took stock quickly. The living room stretched to the right, with a single window overlooking the street he’d just come in from. The window didn’t have the metal shutters that the most newly-renovated buildings had, but it did have a decorative, sturdy-looking lattice. Halfway into the living room and across from the entrance was an open door that led to the bedroom - G could see the corner of a white bedcover. The bathroom was at the end of the single hallway, directly across the entrance. The kitchen was five steps into said hallway and to the left, narrow and long, with a service porch at the far end that - yes - had a washer and dryer.

He went back to the living room and stepped through to the bedroom. It had a king-sized bed, a glass door leading to a breakfast porch Sam would’ve _loved,_ and a huge wall closet that turned out to be empty except for some spare linens, towels and a nice safe.

G looked down at the floor: the yellow tiles appeared to be original, and the building could probably be dated by them. Even the porch had painted tiles, stain-resistant and identical to the ones in the kitchen. Really, the place was _nice._

He made sure the porch door was bolted before he left the room. The glass made his skin crawl. He tilted the shutters on the living room window, letting in the daylight but making life harder on anyone who wanted to keep tabs on him, turned the AC on and headed back to the kitchen. The kitchen table had a stack of takeout menus and some tourist brochures, but G wasn’t interested. He dumped every article of clothing that he wasn’t wearing in the washing machine, as well as the bag they’d been in, turned around and went to take a shower.

He hadn’t been in a country that had unrestricted running water since he’d left the States.

An hour and a half later he was showered and rested and had dry, clean clothes. He still had a few hours until Dunski was due to pick him up for dinner. The weather outside was possibly worse than it’s been before. Tel Aviv was about ten degrees cooler than the desert but felt hotter; the high humidity would do that. However, the kitchen was empty save for the espresso machine’s capsules, and - G suddenly remembered - this was _Friday,_ which in Israel was already the weekend. Israeli stores closed in the early afternoon on Fridays - but how early? Last light and Shabbat weren’t for five more hours, but G didn’t want to take chances on this.

Besides, it would be a good chance to practice his Hebrew.

 

* * *

 

 

 **Figure 2:** Sde Dov and Dizengoff Center, relative positions

 

* * *

 

_16:40_

 

He’d ended up buying clothes as well as food. The clothes that made him pass as a tourist in Sinai would do the same here, but they’d made him stick out just as badly. He wanted - needed - something less conspicuous. Most men on the street wore knee-length cargos, but full-length blue jeans were common enough. There was a mall not five minutes from the apartment, and it had a branch of the chain that sported the [red logo](http://www.castro.com/en/MEN.html) he’d spotted on every other article of Israeli men’s fashion.

Back at the apartment, he stashed his shopping appropriately - dairy in the fridge, clothes in his bag - connected his tablet to the wifi and went about the arduous process of establishing a secure connection home.

Nell’s face blinked on the screen moments later, blessedly familiar. “Hi, Callen.”

He sank deeper into the couch. “Hi, Nell.”

“How’s Tel Aviv?”

“Humid. How’s LA?”

“Dry.”

“Heard from Sam?” He kept his tone idle. She shouldn’t have heard from Sam, not unless something had gone wrong, so wrong that G shouldn’t be hearing about it from a status call that _he_ initiated. G would _never_ have put hundreds of miles between Sam and himself unless the risk assessment -

“No,” Nell said. G’s shoulders relaxed. “but we did hear from the Israelis. They say -”

This part he knew.

“That they’re not waiting until next week, yeah, I was told. Met an old friend.” He put an emphasis on the last two words.

Nell’s eyebrows shot up as she drew the right conclusion. “I see.”

“I’m invited to dinner with her aunt,” he revealed. He and Nell were trading new information, catching each other up, and this was something Nell wasn’t likely to learn from any other source.

“Ilana? Nice.” The tone of her voice was appreciative, almost envious.

“What do you know that I don’t?”

“Ilana Dunski practically _was_ the Mossad’s West Asia network for most of the 80s and part of the 90s. Ran it from _Lebanon._ ”

Yeah, that would explain how Ilana and Hetty got to know each other so well. And using Lebanon as a base of operations to run a network - “I see crazy runs in the family.” The distinction of base countries versus target countries existed for a reason. Base countries were preferably nice and neutral. The more hostile the target country, the safer it was to manage operations from a third-party base country. Lebanon was both a significant target country for Israeli intel, and a hostile one. Successfully using Lebanon as a base country to spy on even more problematic target countries - that was, actually, exactly the kind of feat G could believe from anyone Hetty called a friend.

“Should make for an interesting dinner,” Nell remarked.

That stung, a little. Maybe Nell would like to sit down for a master class with Ilana Dunski, but that just wasn’t how G wanted to spend this evening, particularly not when it was mixing the social with the professional. He couldn’t really blame Nell for the sentiment, though - that would be like…

He cut the thought short and replied with a stock phrase, letting the feigned lightness tell Nell that he didn’t appreciate the attitude. “I don’t like ‘interesting’. It usually means somebody’s shooting at me.”

“You’re in the wrong line of work for boring,” she said, replying to a joke with a joke. Then she sobered up and asked earnestly: “You okay?”

He hated that question. He really did. It was part of the debrief, though, and he couldn’t _not_ answer. Just because he hated this part didn’t mean it wasn’t necessary. “Well, I’m shopping in Tel Aviv while Sam is having tea with terrorists, hosted by a Bedouin tribe known for organ trafficking and pouring acid on people for kicks as much as for their hospitality, so - yeah, _I’m_ great.”

Nell’s face did something complicated that was probably an attempt to put on one of her usual smiles. “That was so cute. You just sounded exactly like your partner.”

“I did not -” G began, then stopped. He didn’t really mean the denial. Nell would be able to tell, even though she was no Hetty. What he’d meant was that he could damn well be protective in his own right, and hadn’t had to learn that from Sam; but the truth was, if G was showing his protectiveness then either he, Sam, or both of them were doing really badly.

“Whiplash getting a bit much, huh?” she asked sympathetically.

“Now why would that happen?” He shot back. Just that morning, he’d been fully undercover in hostile territory. Now he was safe and looked after by allies, but the job wasn’t done yet.

He and Nell were both silent for a moment.

Eventually, Nell asked the question that came next: “Should I get Hetty for you, or…?”

“No need.” Hetty could hear all of this from Nell.

“Alright. And stop worrying, Callen. Try to think of tonight as a date.”

“ _Not_ helping, Nell!”

Her laughter carried him through the rest of the afternoon.

 

* * *

 

_18:30_

 

At a glance, he looked Israeli. It was a muted sort of a surprise. She hadn’t expected Callen to dress in local clothes and adopt Israeli body language, but only because she hadn’t spared it any thought. If she had, she would’ve remembered that he spent most of his adult life in undercover environments.

Maybe the real surprise was how well this particular second skin became him.

“Titchadesh,” she said as he entered the car. There was no English equivalent to the Hebrew greeting for having new stuff.

“Toda,” he replied.

“Mat’im lecha yaroq.” _You look good in green._

“One, it’s not green, it’s turquoise. Two, didn’t we talk about that part?”

That would be the part where sex was not going to work a second time. Which they had talked about last year in Afghanistan, but if a comment this innocuous set him off then his local act wasn’t going to last five seconds of engagement. “Welcome to Israel.”

“Where complimenting people on how they look is not an innuendo.”

 _It can be,_ but she didn’t say that. Instead, she asked: “You want the road with the sea view, or the towers view?”

He gave her a Look. She knew what his answer to that question was going to be, and he knew that she knew - making it not a question at all.

DC had been years before, and once. It didn’t have to still matter but evidently, it did. _I hate you_ was a lie; she knew it, and he probably did too. There was no need for him to say _That’s not happening again_ unless there was a viable chance it would; and she didn’t have to buy him lunch or put that much thought into it. They both got something from this: _that_ was what made it matter. It wasn’t about sex, and it definitely wasn’t about love. She had a fairly good idea what it was about, for him; and that was what made it work for her, too.

If it weighed on her this heavily then her family would be able to see it. She sincerely hoped that Danielle got held up and wouldn’t make it to dinner, or else Zvi would hear about this before they made it to dessert. It was a constant of Zvi’s, that he ignored his actual little sisters in favor of picking on Yael, and the expectation that she would find someone to marry had been hanging thick around her for over a year now.

Zvi pursued Talya for more than half a year before something came out of it, but Yael had barely paid that any attention at the time: she was too busy balancing academic duties and undercover work. The rest of their family made it seem so easy. Her parents and most of her uncles and aunts met each other on the job. The exception was Aunt Orit, who was a schoolteacher. It was too soon to tell if the pattern would repeat in Yael’s generation. Zvi had married the controller who made his life hell and Shira, his youngest sister, had bagged a nice schoolteacher along with her groceries; Aya, their middle sister, had deliberately looked outside of those pools. She’d dated one mild-mannered, sarcastic geek after the other until she found precisely the model she had in mind. Yael was younger than Aya, older than Shira; Shira was older than Danielle.

Danielle was the same age Zvi had been when he found Talya.

 

* * *

 

_18:50_

 

 _Only in Israel,_ G thought. It was maybe two kilometers across fields that separated Tel Aviv from Herzliya but in Israel, that was enough to call them separate cities rather than two neighbourhoods of the same one. Even without looking up the numbers, he was pretty sure LA was bigger than Israel’s entire “Center”, its central metropolitan area. That LA’s population was bigger than all of Israel’s was a no-brainer.

It’d been mostly apartment buildings so far, but the street Dunski pulled into now was primarily houses. G eyed her surreptitiously. She’d been quiet since they left Tel Aviv. She could just be giving him space - she _was_ capable of doing it when she had nothing to gain from unsettling him - but he wasn’t sure. Now that he wasn’t tired and not as cranky as he’d been before, it was easier to notice that the past year hadn’t been kind to her. She was twelve years younger than he, but there was weariness written into her skin, into the fading colour of her hair, that made her seem older than that.

She turned the car into an [even narrower street](http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz80/hagar972/Fic%20Things/KissufimStHerzliya_zps9be6f5ae.png) \- and all streets and roads in Israel were narrow, compared to North America or to Europe. There were no two-family houses on this street, and the yards didn’t seem _quite_ as pitifully small; like Tel Aviv it was a mix of old and new, but unlike Tel Aviv nothing here had been renovated.

Dunski pulled into a driveway, blocking the car that was already there as she parked.

“Let me guess: that’s your aunt’s car.”

“My cousin’s friend’s car, actually.”

G raised his eyebrows. “Nice car.”

Dunski didn’t reply.

 _Yael,_ he reminded himself. He was about to be in an entire room full of Dunskis.

There was no way to tell this house apart from any of the others.

She rapped on the front door twice. A female voice, young-sounding, shouted something from inside but G couldn’t make it out clearly: the door was solid wood. Seconds later the door opened and a girl tossed herself at Yael in a hug with a shout of “Yaeli!”, the last vowel stretching excitedly.

This had to be the cousin. She looked more like a sister: same height, same face. Same voice even, except the cousin’s was vibrant where Yael was always composed. Though that could be a difference of age rather than temperament, for all that G knew.

The girl had not yet let go of Yael when a woman followed from what G assumed to be the kitchen, given that she had a kitchen towel in her hand. Same height, same body, same face _again_ \- except older, probably in her fifties, and those eyes were a cool light green whereas Yael’s and the girl’s were chocolate-brown.

“You must be Callen,” the woman said. Her English had a faint accent, almost not quite French.

“And you must be Ilana,” he replied.

Ilana’s daughter finally let go of Yael. _Vibrant_ was a good word for this one: unlike her mother and her cousin, she didn’t hold the force of her personality in check.

“Hi, I’m Amit.”

“And we’re all still on the doorstep,” Yael said dryly.

“Well, then come on in!” Amit dragged her cousin in by the hand.

Ilana’s look was amused as she gestured G in. He shrugged in reply as he followed her.

The room to the left was indeed the kitchen - that was where the scent of food was coming from. Directly ahead from the front door was the living room, presently unoccupied, and to the left of it was the dining table, which was being set by a man and another girl.

The man had to be the infamous Michael. He was well-built - 6’2” not including the shock of salt-and-pepper hair - and had the sort of body language that suggested Amit got her brightness from him. His eyes, when he turned his head, were Yael’s and Amit’s eyes - and that smile made G wish he could get out of there. Friendly or not, this man was no less deadly than he’d ever been.

“Az ata hachaver shel Yael.” _So you’re Yael’s friend._ Except when referring to a ‘friend’ of the opposite sex -

The girl who had to be Amit’s friend who had a very nice car turned her head sharply. “Le’Yael yesh chaver?”

And yes, he’d just been mistaken for Yael’s boyfriend. Splendid.

“Me’ha’avoda, [Nohar](http://distilleryimage4.ak.instagram.com/a5c2fd08a24611e3a8af0e0b4f6d16dc_8.jpg),” Yael said, voice laden with boredom. _Me’ha’avoda_ meant “from work.” That probably referred to him - dropped pronouns weren’t uncommon in Hebrew. He wasn’t sure about ‘Nohar’; maybe it was the girl’s name.

The presumed Nohar focused on him, and grinned. “Achla.”

Oh, _shit._ There was an awful lot of privilege in that grin. The girl it was attached to could be a model: 5’7” or 5’8” and pretty much made of long limbs, big eyes and long dark hair. She had to be about Amit’s age; G was willing to bet a good lump of money that those girls were pre-draft and so no older than 18 - but that smile was predatory.

He hadn’t liked girls like that when he’d been that age. He didn’t like them much now that he was twice that old, either.

 

* * *

 

_21:50_

 

Nohar was quite insistent about not missing even one night of clubbing. Apparently Amit was due to draft within a month, and that made clubbing practically sacred. G wasn’t going to complain as that meant both girls were gone from the table ten minutes after dessert, which in turn made the tail-end of the evening significantly more pleasant.

Outside, the air was cool and smelled of some sort of sweet flower. The street was still quiet, save for the sounds of families drifting from the houses. It was an Israeli-style suburbia.

G caught Yael’s eye across the car, just before they both entered. “So, is Nohar always this friendly?”

“You should’ve seen her when we got her.” Yael’s tone was mild as ever.

Well, that put a different spin on _My cousin’s friend._ G shut the passenger’s side door. “So when you said she’s Amit’s friend…”

She started the engine. “That’s also true.”

But it was only part of the truth. Nohar’s home situation had been bad in some way that required her removal. G was pretty sure she still had a good relationship with her family as the car was hers, not Amit’s. “Right,” he said, keeping his voice light. “She’s still a menace.”

Of everything Yael could say in reply, she chose silence.

He watched her out of the corner of his eye. Her expression showed nothing. It never did, unless she wanted it to. He’d expected her to be more expressive with her family but she hadn’t been, not quite. She did touch more: Yael had fit perfectly among non-Israelis, not a single wrong note, but she kept skin-close to her family all evening. He couldn’t know what that meant as he hadn’t seen her with Israelis who weren’t her family - and Israelis in general didn’t seem to believe in personal space bubbles.

Other than that, she was as unreadable as she usually was. He’d seen this kind of blankness before: it wasn’t the cool front of the ordinary soldier, the misleading distractedness of the SpecOps operative, or the equally misleading offhand kindness of the case officer. This was the result of years and years of repressing every last sign of emotion, until the link between emotion and expression was severed.

This wasn’t job-typical. Not at her age, not if one came from a family that was as loving as hers seemed to be. There was something in this picture he was missing. Maybe she’d always been this way; it was rare, but ‘rare’ didn’t mean ‘never’. It was almost easier to believe that than to try and imagine what could’ve possibly been so bad, so uncontrollable, that wiping out every last sign of expression was the best response she had.

He could ask. She would lie. He wouldn’t even be able to make anything useful of her lies, he was pretty sure, and anyway -

It was annoying to know that she had him figured out years ago and he still didn’t know what made her tick. All he had to lose by asking was the thin belief that she might not lie, not about this, not to him.

He chose silence.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nohar is borrowed from an Israeli TV show called Ptzuim BaRosh. More characters from Ptzuim BaRosh will show up in SSG/6. You can find the entire thing fansubbed to English [here](https://www.firedrive.com/share/F_A9E70BAB9774C113) or [here](http://hagar-972.tumblr.com/post/99656735449/firedrive-are-down-until-further-notice-so-heres); it only takes 5-6hr to watch - and experience indicates that if you make it ~1.5hr in you’ll want to binge the whole thing. (The first episode tries to convince you the show’s a procedural. Don’t believe it.)


	2. Other People's Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a Holiday Eve today, and all y'all benefit. (And happy Sukkot to anybody who celebrates.)

_“And so you're always silent_  
 _But the fire burns you up inside_  
 _And all the words that slipped away_  
 _You’ll find them in other people’s dreams”_  
\- [Other People’s Dreams](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxHkMIRf7Kw), Idan Raichel Project ([official video/studio version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDpUlvF0-Dg))

 

* * *

 

_Friday, August 16, 22:15_

 

The bright colours of the living room welcomed Yael as she pushed the door open. There was a degree of habituation: you didn’t notice things as much if you saw them all the time. Some days, though, the yellow and azure jumped at her against the white walls and the [sesame-tile](http://www.adira.co.il/upgrade/uploaded_pics/1264695977-1.jpg) floor, vivid and clear. She chose those colours exactly for days like this.

The quiet hit a second later. She removed her wallet and cell phone and temporarily dropped them on the kitchen table, then turned and walked through the living room to open the porch and let some of the city noise in. It was a little early still, but the post-dinner crowd was already forming. The street was quiet like most residential streets in the Old North, but she was only a few buildings away from the avenue, near enough that she could hear the traffic and even see the sea from the porch, if she looked at just the right direction.

She removed her sandals standing up, not bothering to look down, then picked them up and carried them over to the bedroom. There she lost the jeans too and went to pick up the laptop from the spare room. There was probably an email reply waiting for her - it had probably been there that morning already, but she hadn’t had the chance to check.

Her old undergrad desk was in the spare room but she never used it. The room was done in the same mid-tone wood as the furniture of their childhood rooms, the textile in soft, worn blue. Mostly it was Shai’s crash space: Yael’s apartment in Tel Aviv offered better access to clubs and less pressing attention than their parents’ place in Kochav Yair. It was Omer’s too, should he want it, but he’d only used it on those rare chances he and Shai got the weekend off at the same time. That was before his discharge; he’d been renting with Danielle since having been transferred to the Center a few months before his discharge. Danielle was basically the boys’ age, and her crowd and Omer’s overlapped well.

One day Shai would discharge, too, but that day was years in the future. Shai wasn’t ready to consider a civilian life, yet. In the meantime, the air in Yael’s spare room tasted of the mud-like scent of heavy desert dust and the fresh sweetness of clean laundry.

She removed the laptop from the drawer and returned to the kitchen. There was sweetened [_mekupelet_ coffee](http://www.judaicawebstore.com/elite-instant-coffee-mekupelet-flavored-P9387.aspx) concentrate in the fridge. She poured about a finger of that in a glass, filled with milk to the top and sipped on the cold coffee while she waited for the secure device to boot the whole way.

She did indeed have a reply. There was no attachment, no link, only two lines of text: _We need to do something about your musical taste. Like, get you one_ and _Eggplants are the bomb._

She leaned back in her chair, shoulders finally resting against the wood. She could hear the first line in Tony’s voice in her mind. It was friendly in the way the man was, holding on to the friendliness the way some held on to dignity and for the same reasons. Tony’s words weren’t an expression of _frustration,_ exactly: he didn’t like getting whole answers at once.

The second line, though, that was of some concern. ‘Eggplants’ probably referred to Anat Mejaled, who was in DC. It sounded as if she managed to get caught up in something involving bombs, which Yael didn’t like. If they got a dent on Anat - well, the FBI were nominally responsible for Mejaled. They could probably glare at the FBI over the phone and have the FBI deal with NCIS. This was her supervisor’s problem and not hers so long as they didn’t have to directly deal with NCIS.

She wasn’t going to call Moshik and tell him, though. The information and insight Tony provided about Ziva literally couldn’t come from anyone else, and even one leaked item would betray his identity. That meant Tony was classified as a dark source, and access to information originating from him was heavily restricted.

She located the link to _Everybody_ because that was guaranteed to make him smile if not outright laugh, typed the code underneath the link, and shut the computer.

The next day was a Saturday, and it was another workday.

 

* * *

 

_Saturday, August 17, 10:10_

 

The weather was just as hot and humid as the day before. G had every intention of not setting a foot outside the air-conditioned apartment if he could help it. He wasn’t sure how long this lull was going to last, and he intended to make the most of it.

It didn’t last long: the phone call from Dunski came at around ten in the morning, saying someone will be over to pick him up in fifteen minutes and to pack an overnight bag.

The car that showed up was another white sedan. G had already determined that white sedans were the Israeli equivalent of dark SUVs. The driver of the car was not a _driver,_ but he didn’t act as if he’d been given any orders regarding G other than to drive him over. Possibly a Security guy, just the first person Dunski had on hand.

It was a short drive, anyway: just across the Yarqon. G saw some new residential towers near the highway, but the buildings in this [neighbourhood](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/RamatAvivGimel.jpg) were of the [designs](http://www.haaretz.co.il/polopoly_fs/1.2163544.1384251746!/image/1260131952.jpg) that reminded G of Soviet-era residential building, albeit at a more human-scale. Israel had had a very strong socialist bent at its inception; these buildings probably dated to back then.

The one they parked near had been renovated. Other than a fresh coat of paint it had an intercom system and rolling [metal shutters](http://www.shutter.co.il/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/city_shutter_11.jpg) instead of the [uniquely Israeli](http://michaelarch.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/20101212_4043.jpg) white plastic ones. G also spotted any number of discrete security cameras. He managed to resist the urge to smile directly into one of those.

There were electronic locks installed on the doors, but Security didn’t need to wave a card past the reader or type in a code. The apartment door was opened from the inside as they approached it. G expected that. What he didn’t expect was for the person who opened the door to be a very young woman in a bright turquoise tank top and jeans shorts, her green eyes smiling out of a light brown face as if she was welcoming them into an actual living room and not into one that’s been converted into a miniature open-space office.

“Ma kara, hayu pkakim?” she asked Security, who scowled at her.

 _What, were there -_ caps? Screws? No: _pkakey tenu’aa,_ traffic jams. The question was: _Did you run into traffic?_

Security had driven normally - or at least, Israeli-normal. The barb, and Security’s scowl, made G wonder if that meant Dunski’s getaway-driver style was normal for Shin-Beit personnel.

The only other person in the room was a pale, skinny boy stuffing salad and fried eggs into pittas at a kitchen counter.

“Yael, hem kan,” the girl called out. _They’re here._ She didn’t wait. Rather, she returned to what was presumably her desk.

Dunski emerged from an office down the single short hallway. “Café?” She asked, using the Hebrew pronunciation.

“And a good morning to you, too.”

She shrugged. She even bothered to make it look real. That was unusual. “About an hour ago, a group of supposed refugees presented themselves at the Kerem Shalom pass.”

The ironically-named Kerem Shalom - _Peace Vineyard -_ was one of the [Gaza-Israel passes](http://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/assets/4777002/gaza_2007_map_correct_PASSIA.png). The southernmost, it was the nearest to the border with Egypt. African refugees and other migrants came to Israel by land, through Egypt. One way to achieve that was directly through the Sinai border. Once that way had been open, and tens of thousands of people entered that way. Nowadays anybody who tried crossing that way was more likely to be shot by the Egyptian Armed Forces and left to bleed to death in the desert, and those who made it past the Egyptians still had to face the Barrier. The Barrier was Israeli, and the Israelis had learned to build walls in the West Bank, where they needed to keep out some very determined suicide bombers. The asylum seekers didn’t really have a chance.

The other way from Egypt to Israel was through Gaza. Gazan Palestinians were not permitted outside of the Gaza Strip except in exceptional humanitarian cases, but Israel had to take in any non-Gazan who presented themselves at the gate. The challenge was getting into Gaza: to achieve that, you had to get someone to take you through the tunnels dug under Gaza’s border. The tunnels were run by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, the biggest terrorist organizations in the Strip, which taxed the tunnels the way governments everywhere taxed the import-export business. Being smuggled through the tunnels required enough money to pay off both the Bedouins and the terrorists - or being on friendly terms with them.

Sam’s group was on _very_ friendly terms.

“I have their photos right here,” said the girl. She joined them in the kitchen, holding a stack of about a dozen printed pages. She glanced at Dunski and, upon receiving a nod, handed the stack over to G.

“They yours?” Dunski asked.

She knew perfectly fine what Sam looked like. _So that’s how we’re going to play it._ He took the pages from the girl and scanned through the photos and physical descriptions. Sam wasn’t there - and that wasn’t the only thing G didn’t like.

“Some of them are. And some are new to me.”

“Any pattern to those accounted for?”

“Yeah. They’re the ones who are good at talking.” _The ones who send others to kill and die for them._

The boy paused in his sandwich-making. “Should I tell Rimon we’re a go, or...?” asked.

“I’ll handle it,” Dunski said. “Noam?”

It was Security who replied: “Be’tipul.”

‘Noam’ was a name. And _be’tipul_ \- G knew that one, too: _In treatment_ was the name of a TV show. Except this wasn’t a shrink’s clinic, so obviously that was the wrong translation. The root of the word meant _to take care_ \- oh. _It’s being handled._

Noam exited the office. Dunski turned her attention back to G. “Coffee?”

“You just asked me that.”

“But you didn’t say yes,” the boy said wisely.

“No,” G replied firmly.

“Maybe some water?” the girl asked.

It didn’t escape G’s notice that the kids had their bodies carefully angled away from Dunski -

\- who was wearing the distinct expression of someone who didn’t know whether to congratulate or berate her younger siblings. _Great. She’s teaching acolytes._ “Fine,” he forced himself to say, since it was obvious the Israelis were not going to let up until they got him to accept _something._

The boy removed a glass from the drying rack, but Dunski took it from his hand and filled it from the [dispenser](http://ypk.cs4u.co.il/wbl_vcs31_P_Images/gct/pic/4LZFAMILY_1shos_6.jpg) before handing it to G. “I have calls to make. You can sit here or…”

Yeah, no. G wanted information. He stuck his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the door and the guy who’d just left through it. “He’s going to ‘handle’...”

“Preferably, dialing down our escort from the default four.”

“Four,” G repeated flatly. “That’s… vigilant.”

“The guidelines dictate two Security officers per handler, when interviews are expected.”

 _And,_ G thought, studying her face and her posture, _this protocol has been written in blood._ All he said was: “I’ll hang out here.”

 

* * *

 

_10:40_

 

He was going to make it a game of which of them could refrain from talking the longest. In fact, his bet was that they could make it the entire drive to wherever they were going without either one of them saying a single word.

Then he saw the exit sign, and recognized just _which_ interchange they were passing by.

“Are you kidding me?” G demanded. “The highway exit for your General Staff is called ‘The Peace’?”

“This exits connects to _Derekh HaShalom_ ,” Dunski replied, deadpan.

“Yes, because having the General Staff located on ‘Peace Road’ is so much better.”

“The train station is also named HaShalom.”

 _Did you just volunteer information?_ She never did that, not unless she was leading the conversation somewhere specific. _Go ahead, just say whatever you have to say._ His mind supplied the line by habit; he wasn’t actually looking for a fight. Instead, he said: “Is that so.”

“Be’rakevet ha’shalom af pa’am ein makom lashevet.”

“And why is there never a free seat at Peace Station?”

“Tamid hie mele’a be’chayalim.” _Because it’s always packed with soldiers._

G shifted in his seat so he could better look at her. Taken as a metaphor, this was actually an answer to his question - one Yael didn’t have to give. “Did you just make that up?”

“It’s from a [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdNZRZyqHfY).”

He’d need to search those song lyrics later. But for now - _Well, since we broke the ice._ “So, where are we going, again?”

“K’tzi’ot.”

It took a second to recall the name on the map he’d memorized. Located about a third of the way down along the Sinai border from Gaza to Eilat, K’tzi’ot wasn’t a town: it was a prison complex. The original K’tzi’ot was one of the places Israel stashed its convicted terrorists and those detained based on intel alone. In recent years K’tzi’ot developed a second facility, a detainment center for undocumented migrants.

“Is that where we’re going to interview subjects or meet up with Rimon?” he asked.

“Both. Our interviews will wait for tomorrow. The sector officer, Captain Maher, will see the subjects situated.”

A ‘sector officer’ or ‘coordinator’, in Shin-Beit parlance, was the case officer responsible for all assets and operations within a certain area. Sector officers, as well as interrogators, never used their own names in the field: they were always ‘captain’ this or that.

“What names are we using?”

“Captains Maya and Gidi.”

He had a suspicion, based on her earlier mentioning of _four_ Security officers, and this confirmed it. “You’re goin to try and pass me off for Israeli.” He was good, but he wasn’t that good. His Hebrew would give him away within two sentences at most.

“Maher knows your role in this. Rimon won’t ask. Try to not say more than three words to anyone else.”

 

* * *

 

**Figure 3** : a map of the road from Tel Aviv to K’tzi’ot

 

* * *

 

_12:15_

 

Some deserts were pretty. The K’tzi’ot area [was](http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/A3SLrG93C5Y/maxresdefault.jpg) [not](http://megafon-news.co.il/asys/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/border-nizana.jpg). It was just coarse sand stretching on until forever, cut by the rare kibbutz or Bedouin tent. This was the closest thing to true wilderness that Israel had.

They weren’t going to see the subjects until Maher called. Maher was yet to call, so they took the turn to the military base that was almost literally across the road from the [prison compound](http://megafon-news.co.il/asys/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ktziot-prison1.jpg). The _very_ bored soldier at the gate took one look at her ID and then couldn’t open the gate fast enough.

Like Uvda, K’tzi’ot Base seemed to be mostly open space. Unlike Uvda there were no underground hangars and no sturdy American building but rather tents, prefabs and - farther out on the outskirts - aboveground hangars with corrugated steel tops, which seemed the absolute worst way to build in a desert.

“You know your way around this place,” G noted. She knew exactly where she was driving.

“I might’ve been here before.”

“Oh, were you.”

Their destination turned out to be one of the hangars. Its opening was facing away from the Egyptian border, G noted. Once they turned to face it he had to reassess the classification of the building as a hanger: it had only three walls, and only a small part of the area under the roof was properly enclosed.

G counted one military Humvee, several floats and crates of equipment and four men. One was standing with a clipboard by a pile of equipment, and appeared to be checking items off a list. Two others were arguing by a giant composite of maps and satellite photos taking up parts of the floor. The third was prowling around the composite. They were all in a [B dress](http://www.haaretz.co.il/polopoly_fs/1.2400638.1407588552!/image/1975885095.jpg) \- at least, in a manner of speaking. All of them had lost their uniform shirts, and Clipboard and Prowler had also lost their undershirts.

None of them resembled much what G had expected. They were all fit - impossible to miss with the amount of skin on display - but they were wiry, compact, basically skinny next to other Special Force operative G had known. The tallest was Prowler, who looked as if he might be 5’8” if he stretched. They were also _young:_ Prowler seemed subtly older than the others, and he was mid-twenties on the outside.

He was also the one who approached them, and - there was that languid self-control, as if he had not a care in the world. Yeah, this one was Special Forces, all right.

Prowler shaded his eyes as if against some bright light. “Tir’u, tir’u,” he said.

First person plural, future tense, repeat for emphasis: _Well, look at that._

“Al tachshov al ze afilu, Goren,” Dunski tossed back. The words were sharp - _Don’t even think about it, Goren_ \- but her voice was not. She plucked the cigarette from the guy’s hand as she passed him by and put it in her mouth.

_What the…?_

Prowler - Goren - might have failed to notice that his cigarette had just been stolen, for all he seemed to care. “Ah, az kacha?” he said mildly. _So this is how it’s going to be?_

G couldn’t help but think _Is that her **boyfriend?**_ but the thought didn’t seem quite right. This was an incredibly intimate thing to have done in public, yes, but maybe only to his American eyes; the Israelis in the room didn’t seem to care. They’d definitely noticed what just happened, but there had been no snickering or raised eyebrows; they were behaving as if this was perfectly normal.

It wasn’t, though. Yael hadn’t been that comfortable even with her 18-year-old cousin whom she clearly loved.

Goren held his hand out to G. “Ahlan, ani Shai.” _Hi, I’m Shai._

“Gidi,” G said as he took the offered hand. He had to get back at Yael for this name: keeping the ‘G’ hard and the vowels short felt as if he was hacking up a hairball.

He didn’t expect the wide, genuine-seeming grin and “Ma hamatzav, achi?” - _What’s up, brother?_ It was a good thing he was primed to think of the situation as _undercover_. He still tensed, giving his discomfort away - but the other three soldiers relaxed, turning their attention away from Shai and himself.

Apparently this was Shai’s way of signaling that ‘Gidi’ was all right - balancing his obvious intimacy with Yael, maybe.

Shai turned back to the map composite. “Yalla, la’avoda.” _C’mon, we’ve got work to do._

 

* * *

 

_14:30_

 

It was a good thing that G had basic Hebrew, because not all of the Rimon soldiers had good English, and the conversation shifted between languages constantly. The Rimon soldiers knew their way around the desert - G had spotted some geology guides thrown in with the maps - and this was clearly not their first run-in with the al-Sawarka tribe. G’s contribution was mostly his knowledge of those members of Sam’s party who were still in Sinai. Terrorists from different countries did things differently, and that could affect what resistance Shai’s team would encounter.

The ones whose primary job was to talk had come through Gaza. The ones who stayed in Sinai with the other Salafi extremists were those who might try to take on the border with guns and RPGs. The target of such an attack wouldn’t be IDF forces patrolling the area, it would be civilians. This had happened before: Route 10, running parallel to the Sinai border, has been shut to civilian traffic for years.

It was a good thing that Dunski had alerted Rimon before G had even come into the country. This was no operation for only four people, though. G was working up to asking about that when another Humvee drove into the hangar. It had three more people, even more equipment - and a pile of the cheapest foil takeaway boxes, smelling strongly of lunch.

There were only seven boxes. Thankfully, he and Yael had the sandwiches that the office kids had made.

Shai’s eyes fastened on the pitas. Yael pretended to have not noticed that.

It was a very specific kind of not-noticing, too. This was G’s third job with her, and he had identified an entire repertoire of her “I am not seeing this” expressions. There was “You are beneath me and I will not dignify you with my attention”, “I do not wish to upset you so I will pretend to have not seen that” and her default, “There is no need for me to demonstrate my attention”. This, though, was a fourth kind. G had only seen it for the first time the night before, directed at her cousin and her uncle. It was not unlike a cat pretending away some silliness.

Who _was_ Shai Goren? His interaction with Yael Dunski spoke of a deep familiarity, but she’d been unattached just a year before -

_Her cousin and her uncle._

G walked over to examine the blown-up satellite photo on the wall. It also put him closer to Shai, who was doing the same thing. Shai’s face was almost delicate; it would grow more masculine with age, but it would always be refined. Dark hair, close-cropped; warm brown eyes, oval and elongated, framed by thick lashes -

Those were Amit’s eyes, Michael’s eyes; Yael’s eyes. Didn’t Michael have a brother, the one who’d thrown him into the river? Shai Goren wasn’t Yael’s boyfriend: he was her cousin, Michael’s brother’s - her mother’s brother’s - son.

G turned his head. Yael and one of the soldiers were making coffee and being passive-aggressive to one another over it. This was the guy who drove the second Humvee and distributed the food. He stood out among the others for being far taller and for the dry humor written into the too-deep frown lines on his face. G was mostly certain that he was an officer, and the actual commander of this team: the other soldiers oriented themselves around him. Shai was clearly senior to Beanpole, though. G had wondered about that: what was Shai doing there, if he wasn’t part of this team? Now he thought that the cousins had jumped at the opportunity to work with one another.

The night before G had wondered what Yael was like with people who were Israeli, but not family.

Now he knew.

 

* * *

 

_17:00_

 

It was already afternoon when the phone call from Maher came, saying that he was ready for them. Yael thanked Shai and Team Tal, and Callen and she got back in the car. The AC was a very welcome relief, after having spent the worst part of the day in the open air. The respite didn’t last long: it wasn’t even a five-minute drive to the detainment center’s admin complex.

Maher wasn’t in his office and there was a post-it on the door, so they walked down the hall to the conference room he’d taken over. No doubt he had guest chairs in his office, but the conference room’s roundtable would eliminate the barrier. That was good thinking.

She’d never worked directly with Captain Maher before. The Shin-Beit was a small organization, but it wasn’t _that_ small. There was no doubt he knew who Captain Maya was, though: Yael had been carrying that handle for over a decade, since her Unit 1391 days.

K’tzi’ot was Maher’s first assignment. His file told her that he was quite competent at manipulating the complicated internal politics of long-term detainees. If he kept like that, the Judea and Samaria Branch would try to poach him off South Department - or maybe Interrogations would steal him from the Arab Division altogether.

“Maya.”

“Maher. This is Gidi.” She stuck to English.

Maher put his hand on top of the stack of case folders on the desk. The top one had a photo clipped to its front. Presumably, so did the others. “We got lucky. The doctor wants them separated from general population for three days.”

The prison society had been easier to manipulate before the Prison Service had been given run of the place. On the other hand the new management reduced criticism from human rights groups, which made operations otherwise easier. “Any older detainees aware of the new arrivals?”

“No.”

Which meant the new group only existed in the medical logs. Which made the next question: “Which doctor was that?” The Prison Service had its own doctors, with their own loyalties, but if this group had only been through the initial public health screen -

Maher almost smiled. “Army.”

Judging by Callen’s expression, he understood exactly what that meant. The doctors may have their own ideas - they usually did - but the records could be handled as necessary. “Who do these people say they are?” he asked.

“The usual.” He swept his hand, spreading the folder in a fan, and began separating them out. The first folder had the photo of a woman clipped to it. “She’s probably an actual refugee. Got the scars between her legs for it. Number Two is probably also for real, but I sent for a second opinion on his accent. Number Three is young enough it’s not worth it to keep the Prison Service’s hands off him.” The kid in the photo seemed like an early teen. “And Number Four says he’s got a brother and two cousins in country already, so he’d better not be lying.” He looked at Callen.

“If he is, it’s not about being a terrorist,” Callen replied. He pushed Number Four’s folder together with the other non-terrorists as well as two more folders. “And I don’t know her, either. Or him.”

“Only them?”

“Yeah.”

“So what if I told you this guy,” Maher pulled a folder from the pile of subject, “claims to be the uncle of this one?” The second folder was Civilian Number Six’s, whose photo showed a teen boy.

“I’d say he’s lying,” Callen retorted.

“Man saying he’s the uncle, who is he?” She asked Callen.

“Goes by Abu Adel.”

“Alias,” Maher muttered.

“Most of this group doesn’t use an alias. Actually, he’s the only one in this group to use one.”

This meant that Abu Adel was most likely this group’s leader - which meant he was most likely the leader of both this and the group still in Sinai. This made his “nephew” interesting: a potential weakness or a potential lead. She placed a finger on Number Six’s photo. “How old is he?”

“Young enough that Prison Service are trying to argue him.”

The Prison Service knew better than to pretend 17-year-olds were children. Mid-teens was tricky territory, though. The legal cut-off was 14. If he was older than that - “How cooperative is the doctor?”

“Very,” Maher said sourly, “just not with us.”

“How old does he say he is?”

“How old do they all say they are?” Maher asked rhetorically.

Callen shifted and opened his mouth.

Maher caught on and explained: “Eighteen; old enough to work.”

Callen had a very specific expression. Her best estimate was that this expression read _Sam is not going to like this._

Sam Hanna would do what was needed. But first, she needed to know what situation she was handling. “Will the doctor lie about the x-ray results?”

“No, she just won’t order them.”

Yael picked up the folder and handed it to Maher. “Yalla.”

 

* * *

 

Outside, it was still bright and still hot. She needed to call Noam and tell him to bring an extra pair of men’s sunglasses: Callen’s were wrong, and stood out all the more because he otherwise had the ensemble perfectly. Not that Noam would ask. Things tended to get done when Noam was around: some were things she needed done, and some things she wouldn’t even think of, like the fresh _pitot_ and good hummus of this morning’s sandwiches. Shoshi and Danny didn’t have the car to fetch those; Yael didn’t have to ask to know that was Noam’s doing.

It was the sort of thing that happened, when the same Security personnel were regularly assigned to the same person: they learned that person’s habits and quirks and, if they liked that person at all, responded before being ask. Yael gave it even odds that Noam would bring spare sunglasses even if she said nothing. That was a reasonable request. The other things Noam did -

He was deliberately hiding the signs of his involvement, making it possible for her to ignore him. If he didn’t, she would have to ask for him to be transferred.

Maher, Callen and her caught a few looks as they walked across the facility, but only a few and they were brief. All the casual observer would see was three Shin-Beit officers. Anybody who worked here would know that usually there was only one - and that whatever situation required three of them was a situation you did not want to pay close attention to, if you could.

At the clinic, she hung back and watched Maher handle the doctor. Medical staff and their handling was the most sensitive part of working detainees. Lawyers weren’t a problem; either they didn’t have clearance to do any real harm, or they were invested in maintaining their existing clearance. Medics were as likely to keep their heads down as not, but doctors -

Nobody else was ever going to criticise the Captains, and doctors always knew it.

The look Doctor Yulia directed at Yael and Callen when she’d realized what their presence spelled bordered on hate, but her anger burned low. She was a young military doctor, only a lieutenant. This might even be her first assignment: a typical assignment for a junior officer was two years, and it only took three to make it to captain. She certainly didn’t have the confidence most lieutenants got in their third year.

All of Israel’s security services shared a rank ladder, and Maher outranked Yulia. He could override her authority on everything beyond strict medical care. He didn’t try. Yulia’s hate was muted by the knowledge that she had to preserve her strength. She wasn’t just young as an officer, she was young as a doctor. All the undocumented persons picked across the Sinai border and who presented themselves at Gaza’s gate ended up here, and Yulia was the first doctor to see all of them.

She was the only doctor in this clinic, but she didn’t even have her own office. She had a desk at the back corner of the large room, half-hidden behind two strategically-placed cabinets. The desk was aggressively impersonal. Folders were stacked on it and on spare chairs next to it. No, not spares: some of the medics worked standing when they should be sitting. X-rays and ultrasounds peeked between the folders, but none were taped to the wall: a meager attempt to preserve her patients’ dignity. That wall was facing the room.

Yael didn’t turn her head to watch Maher and Doctor Yulia arguing, only her eyes. Callen still caught her at it, but only because his eyes were following her and not them. His expression was oddly closed off, indicating that he was thinking hard about something.

He moved a few steps to the side, blocking Yulia’s view of her.

Yael stepped forward immediately. There was a stack of notes on Yulia’s desk, the paper thin and military-issue. Yael considered the drawer bureau and opened the middle one. At the back, behind the tampons, she found colourful post-its shaped like an apple. She removed one, stuck it to the center of the desk and covered it with the folder that had occupied that space before. The desk didn’t look touched, but Yulia would find the note and [Natal](http://www.natal.org.il/english/)’s hotline number penned in round, unthreatening feminine-hand digits.

It wasn’t enough.

Yulia could be reassigned at any time if anyone in her chain of command had genuine concern for her wellbeing. That was never going to happen. She was an officer and a medical officer at that. She’d be expected to make it, held to a standard until she achieved it. A standard job posting was two or three years; the expectation would be that she could make it that long.

It was quite possible Yulia had already been exposed to Natal’s number. It was the silent message of _Your distress is seen and recognized_ that Yael was banking on. The doctor would never accept that support from a Shin-Beit Captain, but then, when Doctor Yulia walked away from Maher seconds later, snapping orders at her medics as she did so, Yael was nowhere near the desk.

 

* * *

 

_19:50_

 

Stars were already showing by the time Callen and Yael were walking to their rooms. They weren’t staying at the base, like he thought they would, or wherever the prison staff lived: there was some sort of an educational facility five minutes down from the prison, sitting on top of an airstrip and the border to the one side and an archeological site to the other. It had an on-site [hostel](http://www.lvn.co.il/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/20111128_143446.jpg) which was much nicer than anything on the dusty base could be. That the rooms had solid walls was already an improvement. The beds and tiny desk were metal-frame, but they were painted a cheerful colour and the sheets were clean and smelled of fresh laundry. There were even curtains. The shower, on the other hand, was the smallest he’d seen outside of Japan.

He’d just finished pulling on some sweatpants when there was a quiet knock on his door. Yael was on the other side. She’d showered, too.

“Do you want coffee?” she asked.

He didn’t, but “coffee” didn’t strictly mean the drink _._ “Instant, or real coffee?”

The look she gave him said she damn well expected him to remember that she’d carried a coffee kit to Afghanistan _._

Yeah, that was what he thought. “I’ll just put on a shirt.”

She set up her coffee kit behind the rooms, facing the [old ruins](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/PikiWiki_Israel_5009_old_nitzana.jpg). It was quiet; there were no other guests at the hostel. It was also desert-typical cold, and G wished that - like Yael - he had packed a sweatshirt.

She was wearing Bermuda shorts, and flip flops. It made her look like a teenager - like a teenager who didn’t want to be noticed. She always dressed for invisibility, but this was a different way of thinking about it, somehow.

He sat down on the ground a foot and a half from her. _What if I said no?_ He wondered. _Would she still make coffee if it was just for herself?_ The day had been eye-opening in that regard: here was a woman who fed everyone around her, but didn’t pack her own lunch.

“So.” It was a conscious effort, to not feign lightness but instead keep his voice simple, direct. “Your cousin is probably long past the border by now.” She never told him Shai was her cousin.

All she said was: “Good eyes.”

He could work with that. “That’s what gave you away.”

The lines of her body smoothed. Now that he knew what to look for, he could look at that and think _Shai_ and not _Ilana, Sam_ and not _Tracy_. Sam had seen this in her in Afghanistan, and it made him worry for her. G had scoffed at him then, but now he understood.

What he didn’t understand was what she had to be this afraid of.


	3. Can't Wash Away

_“Here's just as shit out of luck_   
_And I would weep for that_   
_But somebody told me that tears_   
_Can't wash away all the sorrow”_   
\- [Don’t You Bare Yourself](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApXlQApE0Hg), HaChaverim Shel Natasha

 

_Sunday, August 18, 06:15_

 

Sunrise found him sitting the back of a truck, looking out at the desert through a fence. Sam couldn’t decide if the fence was easy to miss, or sticking out. Someone had obviously taken great care to not have the staging area feel like a corral: the fence was palisades rather than chain-link, and it enclosed an area so big that dozens of people could move around in it without crowding.

The Israeli team had hit the camp in the dead of night. Sam was lucky enough to have not been in the main camp at the time; everyone who had was now kneeling in a long line in the sand, hands ziptied behind their backs and wearing nothing but their underwear and hoods. The strike team was busy taking stock of the captured weapons and munitions; they’d walked away from the captives without a single glance backwards. The prisoners were being watched by the platoon that had welcomed them at the border. Military police: Sam had spotted [bright blue berets](https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/v/t1.0-9/q71/s720x720/10487185_10153000980239348_6112459812976207538_n.jpg?oh=50f0b1287165d9712f2c5064e7d80cba&oe=54386438&__gda__=1414934919_c0fcd168f1f009006dd120c082905a1d).

His eyes kept returning to one female soldier, no different from the others except for her hair. An MP with [dreadlocks](http://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20140529&t=2&i=901415767&w=&fh=&fw=): there was something he’d never thought he’d see.

Sam and everyone else presumed to not be a terrorist were still in the back of two trucks. The MPs had given them water earlier, but otherwise hadn’t paid them any particular attention. They seemed to assume - correctly - that nobody sitting in those trucks would try to get away. Unlike the healthy, able-bodied men kneeling in the sand, the people in the back of the trucks were mostly exhausted, chronically underfed; many were injured. Sam bettered his hold on the six-months-or-so-old baby in his arms. Her mother had been killed a few days earlier: the al-Sawarka got tired of her failing to pay the ransom and sold her organs instead. The baby was the reason Sam hadn’t been in the main camp when the soldiers came: she wasn’t doing so well. She’d been crying earlier, but she stopped before they hit the border

He watched as the medics set up their [treatment area](http://sphotos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-xfa1/v/t1.0-9/262925_10150383786729348_1475168_n.jpg?oh=13614c9f21a7a26ab28e05d60260284a&oe=5445745C&__gda__=1414356194_bc2b9beb915a3749d7445655dd04467c): a row of rickety field beds with a net stretched overhead for shade. The sun had only gone up minutes before; night chill was still hanging in the air. It would be at least an hour before it began to be properly hot. Apparently they were going to be here a while.

More vehicles approached. From the size and shape of the dust cloud they raised, Sam figured those weren’t more SUVs but something smaller, lower. When they drew close enough he could see that they were three white sedans, completely out of place here. It was deliberate, Sam thought: a silent claim of authority.

A total of five people walked out of the sedans. They were too far away to make out any serious detail, but he could tell that only two wore Security vests. The other three were presumably case officers. As they drew closer Sam could see that they were two men and a woman. One of the men made a beeline straight for the platoon commander. Security stayed on the other two. The two case officers walked at a comfortable distance, with the casual synch of two who were used to working together. Beige pants, blue short-sleeved button-down shirts, identical wrap-around sunglasses -

Suddenly Sam recognized one, and then immediately the other. That was his partner, walking next to Yael Dunski, looking for all the world as if he was _her_ partner.

The senior member of the strike team - the one who seemed attached to it rather than part of it - broke away from the others and headed for G and Dunski. Sam blinked as the guy plucked Dunski’s paper cup from her hand and proceeded to drink from it himself. Callen didn’t seem surprised, which suggested the two of them had already met. That, in turn, further supported Sam’s assumption that the strike team knew damn well who he was and had deliberately let him stay with the refugees.

He didn’t get to dwell on that, though, because the doctor seemed to have decided that the baby made her top priority while her medics triaged everyone else. She spoke a mix of Standard Arabic, Sudanese Arabic and Tigrinya which sounded as if she picked the languages up on the job. There wasn’t much to do for the baby except insert an IV - the doctor’s hands moved as if this was far from her first baby - and hope for the best.

The lone case officer waited until the doctor disappeared behind an improvised screen with her next patient - a man with badly infected gashes on his feet - before approaching the medics. They made room for him naturally, easily, but kept glancing at the screen, clearly wary of being caught accepting the case officer’s help. His language skills were much better than the doctor’s, and his manner with the refugees was kind, gentle. It was obvious that the medics didn’t grasp - not really - why their commander rejected the case officer’s help.

The doctor had eyes as if she remembered the face of every single patient she had met on this border.

Sam pressed his lips to the baby’s forehead, and hoped for a better future.

 

* * *

 

Maher was still helping the medics - and introducing himself to the refugees as a helper-figure - when the MPs started loading the terrorists into the truck like so many sacks of potatoes. The terrorists were still blindfolded and ziptied - and, G realized, had still not been given water. He glanced towards the treatment area: Doctor Yulia had yet to come out from behind the privacy screen. That explained it: she was bound to raise a ruckus the second she found out, but the MPs and their cargo were going to clear out before the doctor got that chance.

Yael tilted her head towards the truck. “Eichpat lecha?” _You mind?_

“Avoda sheli sham,” G replied, subtly indicating in Sam’s direction. _My job is over there._

“Lama mimatai ata russi?,” she replied _._ The grammar was insane, but he managed to extract _Are you Russian now?_ The most common Hebrew mistake among Russian speakers was misplacing the definite article, so apparently he should’ve said _Ha’avoda._

He ignored that and countered with “Nu az?”, a semi-nonsense phrase he’d picked up on the street and which seemed to mean _Well?_

“Asu li tova ve’tash’ilu et Shai.”

G very carefully didn’t startle. It was the guy G had mentally tagged Beanpole who’d spoken, the Rimon team’s actual leader and Shai’s effective second-in-command. G wished he could put bells on the guy, but he had the terrible feeling he would manage to sneak around soundlessly _anyway._ He had that look to him, as if he could lay undetected on a roof for two weeks.

 _Do me a favor and borrow Shai,_ he’d said.

“Ma kara, Talash, hu yoshev lecha al harosh?” Yael asked. _What’s wrong, Talash, is he sitting on your head?_

G had already reasoned that ‘Talash’ was a derivative of the common Hebrew name ‘Tal’ and could just about figure the idiom, but the tone of voice was wrong. Yael’s voice was usually as blank as her body language, sometimes leaning slightly towards bored or irritated; this sort of light amusement just wasn’t like her. _Body language - oh._ Her body language had been shifting since they arrived on the scene, so slowly and subtly that G only just realized he was looking at a different persona. The day before, Yael acted very much as she had in Afghanistan, as Iris Raz, which in turn was near-identical to the way she’d acted in DC. It made G dismiss ‘Captain Maya’ as nothing more than a name, but now he knew that was a mistake: Maya Sakharof _was_ a distinct persona. Captain Maya was _present_ ; her stance was more open than Dunski’s, and had a slight swagger to it. G’s first instinctive thought was _infantry_ \- Dunski had military affectations which Sam had called as infantry and suggested considerable time spent with _sayarot_ people - but no, this wasn’t infantry-swagger. It wasn’t even _close_. Maya Sakharof couldn’t be mistaken for a servicewoman. The vague sense of distracted care that usually hung about Yael was missing, too: G hadn’t realized how bound up that was in the suggestion of _military_ until both were gone.

At a glance, Maya seemed confident and charismatic. A second, informed look revealed the danger lurking just under the light amusement.

Talash just gave her a long-suffering look. “Al hav’ridim.” G had just about had it with Hebrew’s pro-drop tendencies and heavy reliance on grammatical semantics. Literally, Talash said _On the veins,_ but what it translated to was more like _My veins, that’s what he’s sitting on._ Talash continued: “Mesha’amem lo.” _He’s bored._

“Yalla.” Yael-as-Maya pulled on the first vowel and half-swallowed the second, giving the word a distinct impatient feel.

Talash turned around and strode towards Shai. “Achinu!” he cheerfully barked.

“Did he just…?” G asked.

Yael-as-Maya raised her arms as if saying _I didn’t do anything._

The default address was _Achi._ It meant _my brother,_ and Israeli men seemed to use it as punctuation. G found it infinitely preferable to _Motek,_ sweetie, which Israelis seemed to use indiscriminate of age and gender. _Achinu_ meant meant _our brother_ and, judging by Shai’s betrayed look and Talash’s carefully smug who-me expression, it implied exactly what G thought it did and let Shai know that Talash was in cahoots with Shain’s cousin about this.

He expected her to reply to that in some way, or at least pay attention to the conversation that followed, but _Maya_ casually turned her back and walked towards the truck. Shai noticed that at the same moment G did - and responded by ending his argument with the other officer and making a beeline straight to G.

Noam spotted that, too. He made eye contact with Shai - who lazily raised an open hand - then gestured at the other Security guy and they both made towards the car. That they preferred to sit on Dunski made sense as G wasn’t going to speak to any actual subjects anyway - he had no interest in the terrorists beyond their containment, and Maher would be dealing with the refugees long-term.

Shai was casually making his way towards G - of course he was: everyone else had something better to do. Dunski got her cousin out of the younger LT’s hair by getting him to be G’s babysitter. G could try to make her regret this, but… He eyed Shai carefully. _Yeah, no._ G wasn’t going to try and get anything out of anyone who smiled like _that_ \- as if he was as confidently at-ease in his charm as he was in his lethality.

G looked away and reminded himself: _Think of Sam._

 

* * *

 

_10:20_

 

K’tzi’ot prison had a terrible reputation. Word was, once upon a time detainees were held in drafty tents in the freezing rain. So far, Sam didn’t find K’tzi’ot to be all that bad. Transportation from the border to the prison had been an actual bus. The infirmary was in a proper building, not even a prefab. Sam had been in worse prisons; he’d been in worse prisons stateside, even. Then again, this was the part of the facility explicitly intended for undocumented migrants and for refugees, not the actual prison section.

The room Sam was presently waiting at was a prefab and expectedly shabby and uncomfortable. The walls were painted a shade of yellow that might have been warm, once, before wear and the desert got to it; it was still significantly better than the solid black that Shin-Beit interrogation rooms were rumored to be painted. The room wasn’t air-conditioned, but a token attempt had been made at insulation. It was - Sam thought - as if someone had tried to make the room passably nice and not-awful, but didn’t quite have the resources to do it.

Sam was crouched down next to the wall at the corner far from the door. He could hold that position for a while, but he didn’t think he’d need to. The people who walked him from the infirmary to this room wore Prison Service drab, but then they went away and left only one person outside the door: the strike team officer, the one who treated Dunski with familiarity.

Indeed, when the door next opened it was G who stepped in

Sam pushed up from his crouch and hugged his partner. To hell with everything else, for a moment. They hadn’t really spoken since Sudan.

“Missed me, big guy?” G asked lightly when they finally let go of each other.

That G only spoke up _after_ the hug spoke volumes as to how he was doing - which was about as well as Sam expected. Still, he gave his partner a Look. “Question is, did you miss _me?_ You were looking real comfy with Dunski this morning.”

“Well,” G put on his considering face, “she keeps insisting I should eat, just like you; but unlike you, she doesn’t have a thing for leafy greens.”

Teasing was good, but this wasn’t the response Sam had been expecting or hoping for. Apparently the see-saw of G and Dunski had swung again. Sam didn’t like this, but then - Michelle had a point: he would sooner approve of any of their daughter’s boyfriends before he’d approve of any woman G was genuinely attracted to. Sam pushed his apprehension back firmly. One, he actually believed Dunski when she said she had no intention of hurting G, and that was a woman who’d never hurt anyone by _accident_ ; two, this was a horrible time for G and him to fight. So instead Sam opted to accept the teasing at face value and continue with the program. “So, what do I need to know? Because this,” he gestured widely, “looks a little too much like this isn’t over yet.”

If it was over, he wouldn’t be in an interview room, with a nominal guard at his door.

“That’s because it isn’t,” G agreed. “Abu Adel is trying to claim a guy for family.”

“And the guy is backing the claim up?” There were multiple reasons why this could be worth pursuing. G’s expression told Sam what this was going to be before he said a word.

“Him and everyone else in that group.”

Sam nodded slowly. This told him what the shape of the job was. The situation could turn out to mean any number of things, and it was now Sam’s job to figure out which. It was essentially a favor to the Israelis - the Shin-Beit interrogators could figure this out if they needed to, but Sam doing this would buy them more room to maneuver - and the Israelis already agreed to take the entire group of terrorists off American hands. It was a fair trade. “All right. How are we going about this?”

“The part that should be handled by the time I leave this room is clearing you to be with that group, medically speaking.”

Sam raised his eyebrows and pointed out: “I should have a clean bill of health.”

“Yeah, but the doctor wanted that group secluded for a few days. ‘Captain Maher’ is dealing with that.” Sam could practically hear the air-quotes around “Captain Maher”, and he was familiar with that form of title. “Speaking of Maher,” G continued; he extracted a single page from the folder he was holding, “you should convince everyone there that he interviewed you, too.”

Sam took the page. It was handwritten in English by an unfamiliar hand, detailing an interview structure. “Maher’s the guy I saw this morning?” he asked, just to confirm.

“Yeah.”

“All right.” This was all standard fare so far, but - Sam _knew_ G. There was something else coming.

He didn’t have to wait long.

“Oh. One more thing,” G said. His voice was casual and a little too bright, if you knew what to listen for. Sam did. “Abu Adel’s ‘nephew’ is 15 years old.”

“He’s _what?_ ” Of all the things this could possibly be -

“Looks like 14, but the x-rays don’t lie.”

“G-” Sam did not appreciate G trying to normalize this.

G’s tone turned harsher. “Abu Adel had to get to him somehow, Sam. I don’t need to tell you how this works.”

No, he didn’t, and he knew that sticking by Abu Adel was never going to turn out well for this kid, but that wasn’t the only thing that mattered, here. “We probably won’t be doing the kid a favor, either,” Sam said pointedly. It was something G tended to forget: being recruited by the DEA off the streets had worked well for G, but that was not the normal case. It was a lot more likely for those kids to be chewed up and spat out by the system that was supposed to rescue them.

“It’s not our job to do that kid a favor, Sam. It’s not our job to rescue him. It is our job to figure out what makes Abu Adel tick.”

“Then cut the wire as if he was a bomb?” Sam asked bitterly.

G spread his arms. “We’re in the country of _nohal ptzaza metakteket._ ”

 _The man’s not a ‘ticking bomb’, G._ Sam didn’t say that, though. It was pointless. Abu Adel wasn’t a ‘ticking bomb’, a person with knowledge of an imminent attack, and he was no bomb-maker either. Abu Adel was something worse: he was the person made bombs out of other persons.

This kid whose name Sam didn’t know yet could be one of those would-be _shahids_. Abu Adel had recruited others before him and, if they didn’t stop this now, would recruit even more. If _Sam_ didn’t stop this now. And that wasn’t all: The Shin-Beit was infamous for never trusting other agencies’ professionalism. If the Shin-Beit - if _Dunski_ \- chose to rely on Sam for this, then she was going to take his word just as she would any of her organization’s own officers’.

If there was any chance for this kid, it depended on how Sam would phrase his report. He reached for the folder. “Fine.”

G handed over the kid’s file without further comment.

 

* * *

 

_11:40_

 

He found Callen outside, sitting at one of the picnic tables. Shai paused, taking a second to appreciate how effortlessly Callen fit into a role he’d probably never rehearsed - and to get a bar of chocolate from the vending machine.

There were a bunch of Prison Service staff sitting at one of the other tables, but they weren’t going to be a problem. They were keeping their distance from the unknown Shin-Beit officer. The Prison Service people were by no means saints, but they didn’t like locking up people who had not even been accused of a proper crime. This was the immigration facility, not the prison: the only crime of anyone here was showing up at the border without a passport.

Shai flopped down at the bench across from Callen, broke a cube off the bar and tried to eat it before it melted all over his fingers.

Callen tipped his chin down as if he forgot he was wearing sunglasses and they were tight wraparounds. “Nu?” He demanded.

“Ein be’aya,” Shai replied. _No problem._ “Maher sagar et hapina.” _Maher’s got it covered._ Shai chose the idiom - “to close a corner” - deliberately, knowing that it was difficult to translate, but Callen was still keeping up. However, that bag of Bamba was empty. Shai peeled the paper off the bar a little more and offered it out to Callen who, after a split-second hesitation, broke off a cube. The milk chocolate was softening fast, and Callen ended up with both chocolate and strawberry filling on his fingers.

Callen gave Shai a very unimpressed look, and said: “Ma haketa?” _What’s the deal?_

“Ein keta,” Shai replied, licking chocolate off his own fingers. _Nothing is._ “Taklil, achi.”

It was three whole seconds before Callen said, in English: “I give up.”

“It means ‘take it easy’.”

“Right, like ‘kalil’,” Callen said after a beat.

“Yafe, achi.” _Nice, bro._

“It’s going to be a really long day if you keep talking to me in Hebrew, _achi,_ ” Callen said - then continued in Hebrew: “Ma haluz?” _What’s the schedule?_

Shai waved a hand in the general direction of the sky: _Only god knows._ “Luz ze lechalashim.” _Having a schedule is only for the weak._

Callen looked even less impressed. Then his expression cleared. Shai knew what he was going to say before he sounded the words, because everyone had that face when about to swear in a new language. “Lech tizdayen.” _Fuck you._ Noticing Shai’s grin, he added: “Zo lo hatza’a.” _That wasn’t an offer._

Shai held on to that grin, and said: “Lo be’aya, achi. Achoti ve’ani lo beshutaf.” _Not a problem, bro: my sister and I don’t share._

Callen didn’t even blink. “You think you’re cute.”

“I think I’m adorable.”

“I know someone who says that. Your taste in television sucks.”

Shai didn’t count on the joke being recognized - he didn’t even really watch the show in question; the quip was just one of those things he’d picked up from Omer. “And here I was hoping you’d insult my taste in entertainment in general.”

“So you could turn that on me? No, thank you.”

“Aval achi,” Shai protested mildly. _But, bro._

That got him another look. This one said: _I see what you’re doing and I refuse to be amused._ This was the sort of attitude Shai expected. Yael liked the cagey, wary ones; she liked the work.

That was a thought for another time. Shai put the wrapper on the table and pushed the last of the chocolate towards Callen, who picked it up unhesitatingly. “Anything you still need to actually do here today?” Shai asked.

“Better not be.”

Callen’s words had the edge of truth to them. It fit with what Shai gathered in between Callen exiting the interview room, and Shai dropping the other American back at the infirmary: something had gone down between the two, something that _shouldn’t_ be a problem but upset both Americans anyway.

If _shouldn’t_ was going to be a problem, Shai preferred to find out sooner rather than later. “You still have the room at Nitzana, right? It’s literally across the road.” Callen could go hide out in his room there where he wouldn’t have to see another person, and would still be within immediate call range. If he didn’t feel safe enough to take that option, Shai would turn right around and call Yael.

“You know what? That sounds like a really good idea.”

 

* * *

 

_17:30_

 

G hadn’t had a very good afternoon. He’d had lunch at the hostel dining room then called OSP to check in but then there was nothing he actually needed to do and he didn’t particularly want to engage with anyone. The weather was oppressively hot, and he’d ended up spending most of the afternoon in his room, dozing on and off and startling awake each time. By the time Yael called and asked if he wanted to stay near K’tzi’ot or head back to the Center, he was more than ready to go. K’tzi’ot was 120 miles away from Tel Aviv, but that translated into only a little over an hour as Yael drove, and Tel Aviv had crowds G could disappear into.

They were heading back to the Center, and Dunski had already shed the Maya persona; G didn’t even try to hide his relief as he stepped into the car. The radio was on. It was the same station as before and if it wasn’t the same DJ then it was the same fond, exasperated tone of voice. It was a few minutes before G realized that anything was off.

There were shades and a variable depth to Yael’s detachment. At present, she was the most disengaged he’d ever seen her. This wasn’t the mannequin-like expressionlessness he’d seen her pull off in DC; _that_ was her way of showing exasperation and annoyance, he was pretty sure. This -

This looked like exhaustion, the kind of exhaustion that had nothing to do with sleep. It took him a few more minutes to identify the nuance. It was the absence of anguish that threw him off: usually people were also angry or upset, but Yael just seemed _tired._ Despite the differences, G eventually recognized what he was looking at: this was the way Sam and Kensi looked after a job that forced them to turn on people they felt for, or the way Deeks looked after taking on one of his thug aliases.

Maya Sakharof made Yael sick.

They were a few minutes out of Be’er Sheva by the time G realized this. There were still at least 40 minutes to go if they didn’t run into traffic. G was not going to spend that long in a car with a person giving off that sort of a vibe. He cast about in his memory: where was the nearest rest stop? There was one on Route 6, but that was almost all the way back to Route 1 - maybe ten minutes out of Tel Aviv. That was unacceptable. He was pretty sure he’d seen one about -

\- right there. A few minutes north of Be’er Sheva, a rest area became visible to the left.

“Ani rotze icekafé,” he said. _I want coffee slush._ Israelis considered coffee slush a basic food - G had learned that about ten minutes into his stay in this country. The choice of beverage alone was guaranteed to get Yael to pull over.

Yael didn’t say a word, but she did take the turn.

 _Oh, excellent._ This wasn’t just a gas station with a kiosk store and a few parking spaces, but a fully elaborate rest stop complete with a big parking and three fast food joints. Of these, one was a local burger franchise he didn’t recognize, another was McD’s and the third was a local café franchise that seemed as common as Starbucks was most everywhere in the US. He looked at the McD’s: that would’ve been his first choice if he was dealing with Sam, but this was Yael. G walked into the Aroma instead.

He walked back out several minutes later, sucking on a coffee slush - even sweeter than the Dunkin’ Donuts version, which he was going to point out to the next Israeli to mock the over-sweetness of American snacks - and holding a steaming-hot paper cup in his other. Yael was still by the car. There were free spaces on the asphalt, but she’d parked on the packed dirt; she was standing with her back to the car, looking in the general direction of the road - the closest thing to an open space. She didn’t bother to glance in his direction as he approached. It was - he thought - as much of an indication of comfort as he was going to get from her.

He wordlessly passed her the paper cup and awaited her reaction. It wasn’t coffee, and he wondered when she’ll catch on. The answer turned out to be, as soon as her mouth covered the sippy-hole of the black plastic cover. First her expressionlessness shifted, then she relaxed a miniscule amount.

 _Good._ G hadn’t actually been sure this would work. Coffee would’ve been a very casual gesture, which hot chocolate was not. She’d brought him hot chocolate, in DC: that was the sort of thing Sam would do and pretend he didn’t when G was having a bad day, and G had been angry with her for it. He hoped she remembered that; without that reference, his bringing her the hot chocolate was uncomfortably childlike, and he didn’t need that at the back of his head. The important part was, it worked.

He regularly mocked Sam or Deeks but only rarely Kensi, and he couldn’t mock Yael. Sam was sentimental and Deeks overly sensitive, but this was different. Whatever had gone down, wherever the prisoners had been taken to, wherever Yael had gone - G knew what that sort of interrogation looked like. Yael being upset was a kind of a relief.

Admittedly, he would’ve also been freaking out if he couldn’t make it better. The hot chocolate and standing together staring into the distance soothed Yael enough to be vaguely present, but now the sorrow was showing. He’d seen that sorrow before, in the hotel room in DC.

She turned, pushed away from the car - probably making to return to the driver’s side - and G leaned in on impulse. He knew this, and he could make this better, too: it was easy.

Yael caught his face, cupped it in her hand and held them at a distance. She shook her head minutely. “Not like this.”

“Not like what?”

She tapped a finger against his lips and withdrew her touch. “Not if you don’t actually want to, G.”

That made no sense. However, picking a fight would achieve the opposite of what he wanted, so instead G shrugged and got back in the car.


	4. Innocent or Guilty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second Holiday? Second Holiday. At least after this, the Tishrei Holidays season will be over.

_“The dead weep for the living_   
_The sky's the domain of fairies and angels_   
_And we, we haven't time enough in this world_   
_To be either innocent or guilty”_   
\- [Yulia’s Sky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GsPAnsAuQs), Sharon Haziz

 

* * *

 

 

_Sunday, August 18, 22:40_

 

Nothing seemed out of place until she opened the fridge. It had been restocked: the vegetable drawers were full, there was a new milk jug in the door and the shelves had more eggs, half a watermelon, a bucket of grapes and - Yael pulled the box out - homemade pizza.

The pizza, made from scratch, told Yael that it was Omer who’d passed through. The apartment didn’t smell like food despite having been closed off against the sun, presumably since Yael had left on Saturday morning, but the pizza dough was still fresh to the touch, evidently made the same day.

Yael set the oven and started digging around for the aluminium foil.

Shai and Omer talked. Not that that had ever been a question: the boys rarely checked in less frequently than any other day if they had any choice about that, and were more likely to check in several times a day. With Omer discharged and in-country, it meant that barring operational considerations on Shai’s end, the boys were in constant communication.

There’d never been a question about Omer finding out that Yael had been South or that Callen was in-country. Their parents would’ve never passed that information, but Amit would’ve told her older sister about Friday dinner and Omer had been rooming with Danielle since he’d been transferred to the Center near the end of his service.

But what Yael had spent most of the day doing - only Shai knew that; and Shai would’ve, without question, considered it something Omer needed to know. Her younger brother stocked her fridge and cooked her food, but he didn’t stick around. He knew.

Yael laid some foil in the oven tray, laid two slices of pizza on it and slid it into the oven.

She’d already showered and dumped her clothes straight in the washer. There was nothing she actually needed to do until dinner was ready. The laptop was already up and running on the living room table; she might as well check for any news that didn’t make the bar of her workplace’s daily compilations.

She didn’t expect the email.

She read it twice and clicked away. Tony DiNozzo asking for her help in reaching out to Ziva wasn’t expected. The situation was even more complicated because Ziva’s hunt for the persons responsible for killing her father had shifted from Bodnar’s terrorist ally to the person who’d put Bodnar on that path. Tony believed Ziva was in Africa and had no reason to leave there anytime soon; in fact, Ziva was on her way to Israel, where the _malmab_ was already set up to have her monitored.

They were set up to keep Tony off Ziva’s trail; it was expected that he’d catch on before this was over. The possibility of Tony catching on this early had been recognized in risk assessment.

Tony actually trusting her, though - not phrasing it as a cagey question or a barter request, but acting as if both of them having the same goal and that goal being rescuing Ziva, as if this was all a foregone conclusion -

She might as well call Zvi. He was always up for a fight, and she still had - she got up from the couch and headed back to the kitchen - almost ten minutes until the pizza was ready.

 

* * *

 

_Monday, August 19, 08:50_

 

He’d been in a surprisingly mellow mood when they returned to Tel Aviv the night before, enough so that he’d opted to go out for dinner rather than order in or - more likely - finish off the milk drinks in the fridge. He’d only returned to the apartment so late it was early: he’d dozed off in the afternoon, and his non-24 wasn’t going to let him sleep that easy. That was how he’d ended up grocery shopping at a 24/7 store. Sam was going to love this: Israeli 24/7 stores turned out to have extensive produce sections. G ended up with dairy, chocolate and noodle cups anyhow.

It wasn’t until after he woke up in the morning and put the espresso machine to use that it occurred to him what had almost happened the day before.

_Not if you don’t actually want to, G._

_Fuck._ G put down the espresso cup. He hadn’t even been _thinking,_ just responding - not even that: he’d been running on mental programing almost 30 years old. He hadn’t given in to those patterns in years - mostly because he hadn’t given himself the chance to. He didn’t trust Yael because she’d blasted right through that self-defence, and he couldn’t help but trust her because she hadn’t abused it, hadn’t even leaned on it.

He was still working through that when his phone rang.

The car was the same white sedan G had mentally tagged as Dunski’s; he’d memorized the license plate on Friday. She wasn’t the one driving, though: Noam was. She was in the back seat, behind Noam, leaving the right-side seat to G.

“I take it we won’t be leaving K’tzi’ot today,” he said as soon as he closed the car door. That was the most reasonable explanation: Dunski had said that two Security per handler were mandatory for interviews. She hadn’t said anything about other situations, and K’tzi’ot was full of prison guards and better than that, border cops. Israeli Border Police was a military-grade combat force.

“It’s not in the plan,” Dunski confirmed. She had a pile of folders on her lap which didn’t look as if they belonged to this op; apparently she was planning to use the drive to work. G could use the space, which she had to be aware of.

“So what _is_ in the plan?” he asked, lightly.

“Turns out we have Daahir Jama on file.”

Daahir Jama was one of those who’d come in through Gaza, with Abu Adel’s sub-group. “What’s the play?” G asked.

“He might get a deal.”

“He’s already in prison.”

“He is.”

 _Oh._ K’tzi’ot existed, and so did the people it held. Israel didn’t need Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay, not when it somehow managed to maintain black sites in a country the size of New Jersey. Faced with life and no chance of parole, Daahir Jama might prefer to sell out his buddies and spend his life sentence at a prison that had Red Cross inspections rather than at a prison that didn’t officially exist.

“He might lie,” G pointed out.

Dunski raised a single perfect eyebrow.

Jama could lie and it wouldn’t matter. They didn’t need him or his information; they already knew who the terrorists were. Jama was good for a patsy, though: attributing the incriminating information to him would protect Sam’s cover. And the only reason to protect Sam’s cover was if they had plans for that kid who claimed to be Abu Adel’s nephew.

“Solid play,” G acknowledged.

Dunski nodded once and got back to her folders.

G settled into his seat. It was definitely going to be a longer drive, this time. Dunski could put Marakesh taxi drivers to shame, but Noam wasn’t much crazier than the average Israeli driver. G glanced back at him occasionally through the drive. He hadn’t caught Noam sizing him up so far, but he was sure the guy did. There was no reason for Noam to consider him a threat, and yet -

And yet, Noam’s eyes met G’s through the mirror.

 _Well, damn._ G officially didn’t like this guy. He didn’t like people who were sneakier than he was. The inscrutable mask didn’t help any - _He’s a right match to Dunski_ \- and neither did those cool eyes; the grey of those eyes was too warm to be called flinty, and that just irked G all the more. There was something crucial about Noam he was failing to grasp and G really, _really_ didn’t like that.

Well. He did have the whole day to figure it out.

 

* * *

 

_12:25_

 

That morning, guards came into the [enclosure](http://www.haaretz.co.il/polopoly_fs/1.2122043.1379460038!/image/2087792321.jpg) \- Sam couldn’t call the fenced-in tents anything else - and started pulling people out with no explanation. People were angry and upset. Or, well, the ones who were innocent were: the terrorists were a little more prepared.

A few hours later, people began to be brought back. Some had had medical tests done; some had interviews with a social worker; and others had been seemingly forgotten in a hallway or an interview room somewhere. It seemed like typical prison chaos, a clumsy attempt at efficiency, but Sam knew better. It was the people who claimed to have been forgotten that tipped him off. It looked like ordinary prison chaos - and it would allow Sam to claim that he’d been forgotten in an empty room somewhere when in fact he’d be talking to G.

So far, the part about sitting and waiting was true enough. At least this room had a table and chairs, though it didn’t have natural daylight.

When G entered the room several minutes later he was snacking on something from a bag with an illustration of a toothy-grinning baby. Sam didn’t need to read Hebrew: his partner’s entrance was accompanied by the strong and unmistakable scent of peanuts.

“Seriously, G?” Sam demanded.

“Did you know Israelis never heard of peanut allergies?” G asked as he plopped down on the other cheer. “I think it’s because everyone with a peanut allergy dies before their first birthday.”

“Please tell me you’ve eaten something other than Bamba over the past three days.”

“I had a cheeseburger for dinner last night.”

“There’s cheeseburgers in Israel.”

“There’s even bacon cheeseburgers. Turns out that the entire country isn’t, actually, kosher.”

“You planning to make Aliya?”

“No, not really. The communal personal space thing is a bit of a problem.”

“I’m glad to see that’s the only problem.”

“Whoa there, big grouch. Want some Bamba?”

Sam just looked at him. Eventually, G relented and leaned back in his chair. “Okay, fine, have it your way.”

Sam sighed, deliberately loud.

G rolled his eyes. “What do we have?”

“The kid’s name is Gurey. He’s been on his own for three years, now. About a year before that, his mother took his sisters and him and started running after his father fled from conscription.”

“The kind of conscription that never ends, I take it.”

“Yeah.” That’s how it was, in some countries in Africa: a person was “conscripted”, but that “conscription” never ended. Some fled; those were legally considered refugees, if they managed to reach anywhere that cared for the UN definitions, but back in their home countries their family were always punished for their actions. That was why Gurey’s mother had taken her children and ran. “That didn’t work out too well for them, though.”

“He’s on his own now, so let me guess: traffickers.”

Human traffickers, slave traders: it was a real risk in that part of Africa. Sam gave a curt nod. “There’s one of his sisters he hasn’t seen killed. She might still be alive.” Maybe; not very likely, and even if she _was_ still alive it was highly unlikely Gurey would be able to locate and contact her. “He ran away and eventually ended up in Libya. Managed to get some help, there. His options were either try to make it to Italy by boat…”

“Yeah, how many people drown annually, trying to do just that?”

[ _Too many_](http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/30/uk-eu-migrants-italy-idUKKCN0HP0Y920140930) _._ “Greasing al-Sawarka hands didn’t work out all the great for him, either.” Sam knew exactly what his voice sounded like, but - “He has scars, G. They thought his screams were _funny._ ”

G’s expression shuttered off completely. “And then he acquired an uncle.”

“And then a nice man decided to pay his ‘debt’, yes,” Sam agreed. “Said that Gurey reminded him of his dead nephew.”

“And Gurey bought that,” G said skeptically.

Sam couldn’t fault G for his doubts: he knew his partner’s history. Still, he shook his head. “Those were some real tears, G.”

“Well, that’s actually just perfect.”

Sam didn’t like that tone of voice. “He had a meeting with a social worker this morning,” he said warily.

“Who I’m sure told him all about the nice things he can have if only he’ll be allowed out of here.” G leaned with his elbows on the table. “The Israelis got Daahir Jama framed, solid enough to lean on.”

If the Shin-Beit had enough to pressure Jama - he would break, Sam had no doubt. And if Jama told the Shin-Beit something, anything, it wouldn’t matter what he actually said; he could tell them nothing but lies and they’d still be able to use it to whitewash Sam’s intel - or to blackmail someone else.

Like an orphaned 15-year-old survivor of slavery and torture who _desperately_ needed to not be separated from his guardian, and wanted an education. Sam knew that pitch: _We don’t believe your uncle is a terrorist, but his friend says he is. You’ll help us prove your uncle isn’t a terrorist, won’t you? Just tell us where he goes, who he speaks to. You’re a good kid. Here’s some extra cash to help you both along. Just don’t tell him. He doesn’t need to know his friend betrayed him, now does he?_ And when it turned out that Uncle really was a terrorist - who would Gurey have to turn to? _Of course you can get out any time you want, but you’re so good at this, Gurey, you help so much. Wouldn’t you like to help catch more bad men?_ And what wouldn’t Gurey do for his handler, then?

“Not all of those boys die, Sam,” G said quietly.

No, not all of them, but far too many of them did. And even if Gurey managed to survive this, somehow - _He still deserves better, G._ Sam didn’t say that out loud, though. That would just be pointless. Sam hated this, but he did know how it worked. Leaning on Gurey wasn’t absolutely necessary but it was prudent, and the Shin-Beit didn’t get the reputation of being the best in the trade by ignoring prudence.

 _This world is filled with horror and suffering,_ Hetty had said once when Sam had railed against an assignment. _Sometimes we can prevent it. And sometimes, our only choice is who it will be inflicted upon._

It still made Sam sick to his soul.

 

* * *

 

_17:30_

 

The good news was, Jama had cracked but good. The bad news was, Dunski and Maher were both busy and going to _stay_ busy. Or maybe that wasn’t such bad news after all: G ended up spending most of the afternoon in the quiet and air-conditioned conference room, working his way through [the Israeli equivalent of a Dan Brown novel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_Oren) with the help of an online dictionary. It was practically a paid vacation.

It was late afternoon when he left the room in search of coffee and came back to find Yael there.

“Ma kara, nigmera habamba nugat?” _What, is the nougat Bamba all out?_

G didn’t even bother raising his eyebrows at her. “Yesh Bamba nugat?” _There’s nougat Bamba?_

The look she gave him in reply said, quite clearly, _Yes, there is such a thing as nougat Bamba and we will be attending to your ignorance at the earliest available opportunity._

“How are we doing?” he asked in English.

“Gurey will be interviewed again tomorrow morning.”

“News of Jama breaking has just been officially disseminated. Supposedly, he burned half of that group.” She glanced at the wall clock; like most of her gestures, this too was elaborate and obviously fake. “You should talk to Hanna again before we leave.”

“Sam knows what to do.”

“Maher will be talking to Gurey first thing tomorrow morning.” The way Dunski said that didn’t acknowledge that G had said anything at all. The message in that was loud and clear. G would defend his partner’s professionalism, but - he knew Sam. Young Black men were Sam’s soft spot, and no matter if they were college-educated young agents or teenaged refugees straight out of a trafficking situation. And maybe Dunski didn’t know Sam’s history half as well as G did - hopefully she didn’t know Sam’s history at all, but G wasn’t going to lay any bets against the Israelis that way - but G knew her well enough to know that didn’t matter. Even if she hadn’t picked this up from Sam himself, she would’ve picked it up from G. He was good, but he wasn’t good enough to lie to her.

“Can I at least finish my coffee?” he asked instead.

“I’ll go set things up.”

 

* * *

 

_18:30_

 

Fifteen minutes into the drive back to Tel Aviv, Noam realized they were going to have to make a stop after all. And he’d been so hopeful when they’d left K’tzi’ot: Dunski hadn’t had the look to her that Noam didn’t like, and if the American still eyed him like a suspect object then he wasn’t as antsy as he’d been earlier in the day.

Then Dunski got on her secure phone almost before they were out of the prison gate, and has been corresponding since. Noam figured it was either ordinary office business, or one of her special cases; consultations had a tendency to come with thick folders and long phone calls, if not outright face time. This - whatever it was - could be managed by email and text. Fifteen minutes into the drive, Noam was pretty damn sure it was one of the special cases.

Unlike the consultations, which came in through Interrogations or through the office that dealt with inter-organization cooperation, the special cases had no provenance that the _sadirnikim_ managed to ferret out. The damn kids formed the branch’s administrative backbone, knew every other _sadirnik_ anywhere else in the Service, and had too much free mental time. They also _adored_ Dunski and could be relied upon to put their spare time and resources into figuring out how to best support her. Whatever she did during office hours that they couldn’t ferret out had to be just that classified. Common sense dictated those cases came from the Non-Arab Department: she had a history there, and anybody with brains figured that wasn’t just a _history._ Most people in the Service didn’t change specialities; Dunski’s track record didn’t point to Jewish terrorism so much as to the kind of work even most people in the Service considered a grey area, in-house jobs and those that bordered on the political. Dunski’s experience there was nearly as long as her experience with Interrogations.

Whatever this case was, Noam didn’t like it.

The road sign said: _Mash’abey Sade - 1500m._ There was a rest stop at Mash’abim junction, but -

Noam glanced in the mirror, and caught the American doing the exact same math he was: yes, they could stop here, but it was too early into the drive.

He didn’t expect the American to notice the same things he did. He didn’t expect the American to know to draw the same conclusions. The brief told Noam what he could expect from this guy but it hadn’t mentioned history. Noam knew Dunski had worked with this guy before because she _liked_ him, but this was a bit more involved than Noam expected.

 _Cool it down,_ he told himself. Dunski wouldn’t have liked this guy if he wasn’t all right, and anyone who cared enough to notice that she was upset was welcome to help. That was the part that ought to matter.

No sooner did the rest area at Kama junction come into view than the American asked: “Icekafé?”

Dunski glanced at Noam through the mirror. He blinked in response.

“You two realize I don’t speak your secret language, right?” Callen asked.

Dunski didn’t bother to reply to that; Noam already had the car on the left-turn lane.

Callen disappeared into the Aroma fairly quickly once they were out of the car. He did pause first to look at Dunski and Noam, though. Dunski was already walking towards the convenience store; if she’d checked in on Callen before, Noam had missed that while getting out of the car. He made brief eye contact with Callen, then followed Dunski into the store.

He’d been assigned to the Liaison Department pool a little under a year before. Dunski had been working from home at the time, having somehow managed to crack her ribs on one of those damn special cases that was, supposedly, a consultation. That didn’t inspire a whole lot of trust; having just come from the Arab Department pool, Noam was all too used to idiot case officers who _were_ going to try and sneak off to meet their informants without his supposedly disruptive presence and in all likelihood get themselves killed sooner or later.

The first time he’d been assigned to her was a 3 AM trip up north and she’d been back for maybe a week. The first time he’d seen her work was the first time he’d met her. She was exactly as good as she was said to be, but that hadn’t made him feel better about her decision to pass through an Arab town on the way back; the opposite was true. It was always the best ones who were going to try and pull one over on you, who believed that _their_ informant was never going to hurt them, _their_ informant was never going to screw up and lead someone to them. He wasn’t going to take her word that she just wanted falafel from a particular joint, and neither was the other guy sitting on her that day.

In the end Noam alone had gone with her - that way and with his vest in the trunk they could pass for civilians - and she really did get falafel, and it really was extraordinarily good, but the falafel hadn’t been what it was about. He didn’t remember the scene, not quite, not visually; but he remembered the moment when he realized that she’d been sad, and became less so.

She was sad as she slid her phone in its clip and they both walked into the convenience store. It didn’t look like much: it didn’t look like anything, really, but Noam had been paying attention to her for almost a year. He _knew_.

He kept tabs as she browsed the shelves of the small store. Maybe she’d buy something, maybe she wouldn’t; it didn’t really matter. The point of making a stop was that it wasn’t necessary.

Other than the two of them, there were six other people in the store. The two employees behind the counter were an Arab man in his forties and a Jewish teenager; the boy seemed comfortable, but the Arab had tired wariness behind his welcoming smile. A man at the counter, talking into his bluetooth as he waited for his cappuccino; mid thirties, polo shirt and khaki dress pants; probably a hi-tech daily commuter on his way home unusually early for the industry. Another mid-thirties man by the fridge was almost certainly local; he was wearing a black T shirt, worn cargo bermudas and Birkenstocks, and shopping for milk and chocolate pudding. Two women in their early-to-mid twenties in the snacks section, giggling and putting far too much thought into choosing which cookies to buy; one was definitely an American tourist, probably Jewish, and the other was either her host or another tourist - another tourist, Noam decided: she was avoiding eye contact the way non-Israelis thought was polite.

Dunski only made eye contact when she passed the man by the fridge. She wasn’t really paying attention to anyone in the store or to the gas station and parking lot visible through the glass. That wouldn’t have happened six, five months before. Noam still didn’t know what it meant. Security were assigned to handlers and interrogators to enable them to fully focus on their work. Some took it as permission to be careless; Dunski didn’t, but she was certainly known to take more risks with people she valued more. Most of the time, Noam considered being on that short list a compliment he could do without.

This wasn’t a meet or an interrogation, though. Dunski had a solid record of never leaning on Security beyond their job description, but this wasn’t the first time she showed this kind of trust in Noam outside of the prescribed situations. There was no shortlist for this: it was just him, and he had no idea what to make of it. She had to be aware that she was doing it; it made no sense for her to _not_ be aware of it. And yet -

He shut that train of thought down. In almost a year he’d been watching her, she’d only ever been kind whenever she had a choice about it. In over a decade she’d been part of the Community, no one could name one time she’d been unnecessarily cruel. Wondering if she was messing with him, thinking _why this thing and not the others_ , _why this one facet and not all of me_ was patently stupid. Yes, this was frustrating; yes, this hurt; and the day it would hurt too much - if he never got over it, if she never changed her mind - then he could ask for a transfer. _Should_ ask for a transfer.

And until that day came - _if_ it ever came - here and now he could tell by the lines of Yael’s body that she was better off for his being there, and he could take silent pride in his being able to read that on her at all.

She glanced at him before walking up to the counter: _Do you want anything?_

 _No, I don’t._ Not like that. This was similar to but not the same as the sort of a gesture she routinely extended to people who were _young_. Instead, it was the sort of an exchange that sometimes happened between Security who worked close-protective detail and their charges, particularly when the assignments ran long-term. It wasn’t an unfair assumption for her to make, but it still stung.

If she got that promotion right now and he was offered that job he’d turn it down without hesitation.

He could tell the split-second of her thinking about it before she turned around and headed for the counter. He was entirely unsurprised that she asked for two cappuccinos anyway. She wouldn’t be who she was if she could accept anything extra from anyone she thought of as a person without trying to make it up to them. That was generally endearing, and presently really fucking annoying.

But since he wasn’t going to ask for a transfer first thing the next morning, he should scrounge up some grace with which to accept that coffee.

 


	5. Days of Innocence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a nasty headache all day, so y'all get the last chapter a day early.

_“What time is left_   
_Is devoid of mercy_   
_I have no regrets, nor hopes left for myself_   
_That’s all there is.”_   
\- [Days of Innocence](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpEcmkQ3m5U), Mika Sade

 

* * *

 

_Monday, 19 August, 23:20_

 

“So,” Nell asked, “what did you learn today?”

G was at the rental apartment; the light was on in the kitchen but not in the living room; orange street light filtered in through the shutters he left angled, only half-closed. G leaned back into the couch. What did he learn? Many things, most of which weren’t case relevant. “‘Should’ isn’t the only fish,” he said, deadpan, then looked down at the bag in his hands. “Also, Dunski and I need to have _words_ about the Israeli [definition of nougat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nougat).”

“Oh?”

“This,” G lifted a piece out of the bag.

Nell squinted. “That looks like Bamba.”

“That is indeed Bamba,” G agreed. Trying to break the piece in half was futile; instead he snapped it gently in half with his teeth. “Now, I don’t know if you can see it in this light, but it’s filled with what’s basically Nutella.”

“Okay,” Nell said cautiously.

“This is, supposedly, [nougat-filled Bamba](http://youtu.be/NF9Khp6-r6o?t=3m33s).” He popped both halves in his mouth. “It’s very tasty. Still not nougat.”

“Dare I ask what the fish that isn’t ‘should’ is?”

“Musar,” he told her.

“And musar is…?”

“That’s a very good question. The dictionary claims it’s a ‘corvina’, which apparently is not just a kind of wine. Wikipedia in Hebrew says it’s a stone-bass. Personally I’d trust Wikipedia, as there’s no corvina fish in the Mediterranean.”

Nell gave him a look.

“It’s also the Hebrew word for ‘morality’,” he added.

“Seriously?” Nell demanded through a barely-stifled giggle.

“Seriously,” he replied solemnly.

She hid her face in her hands for a moment. Then she said: “So, I take it you didn’t have a very good day.”

“I had a great day,” he shot back. “Now Sam, on the other hand…”

Nell nodded, suddenly serious. “I read the files you sent. You wanna talk about it?”

“No,” he said resolutely.

“This ain’t your first rodeo?”

“Something like that.”

“So that should be…” She must’ve seen something on his face, because she started laughing. “Really, Callen?”

“It’s practically brainwashing, I’m telling you. If Sam and I don’t get out of this place tomorrow the word ‘should’ will be permanently obliterated from my vocabulary.”

“And what’s worse is that you’re passing it on to _me._ ”

“How about I’ll buy you a pint of Phish Food, when we’re back? To make it up to you.”

“Make that two,” she shot back. “Then _maybe_ you won’t eat both of them on the way from the store.”

He raised his hands. “Guilty as charged.”

“All right.” She leaned forward and put her chin in her hand. “So, what else is eating you up?”

G took a sip from his tisane while he thought. He was sure good tea had to exist in Israel _somewhere,_ but good tisane was significantly easier to find. Spearmint was practically the national herb. Presently his problem wasn’t the Israeli taste in tea, though, but that he’d boxed himself out of being able to claim he was worried about Sam. He decided to bluff. “Nothing’s eating me.”

Nell apparently expected him to do just that, because she didn’t even hesitate before firing: “Should I go get Hetty?”

“Okay, that’s just playing dirty.” The look she gave him was disturbingly Hetty-like. “It’s really not relevant to the case.”

“Because the fish jokes are?”

“That’s -”

She cut him off. “How about I don’t write this down? Unless it’s something Hetty needs to know.”

Hetty would _want_ to know. G gave Nell a dubious look.

“I mean actually _need_ to know, Callen. Talk to me.”

Sam just might take his head off if G tried talking to him about it in the foreseeable future, and well - “Did I ever say how much I _hate_ romantic comedies?”

“Ooh, I love romantic comedies.” She made a _gimme_ motion. “Tell me all about it. Girl meets boy…”

“Actually, it’s more like boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. But the girl…”

“Is a workaholic with independence issues?” Nell suggested.

“Something like that,” G agreed. “They’re co-workers, sort of -”

“Ugh, that’s bad.”

“- it sorts of is. But he’s terrified of losing her, and she’d rather believe it’s just the work dynamic getting to his head than lose him.”

“And then the girl’s ex she’s still friends with comes to town.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say I’m -”

“Shush, we’re not talking about you. We’re talking about a movie.”

“Well, in the movies, the guy doing everything right is enough for him to get the girl.”

“So this is a feminist romantic comedy.”

“I’d say can we just call it a decent human romantic comedy, but…”

“Yeah.” Nell paused for a second, then asked: “So what happens next?”

“See, that’s the part I’m not sure about. But…”

“You think she might come around, or this wouldn’t bother you so much.”

“Well - no. Actually, no. But - there’s something he’s not seeing, okay? And I can see _right_ where it is.”

“So you need to talk to him, and not to her.”

“That’s exactly it.”

“Well, then, talk to him.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re the undercover agent, Callen. You’re secretly good at people. And if you even think about saying ‘not those people’...”

“No, thank you. I walked into enough traps today.”

“That was just one trap. Unless there’s something else…?”

“Watch it, Miss Jones. I might buy only one pint of Phish Food.”

“Ooh, you don’t want to do that. Eric might find out all sorts of things.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

“See you soon, Callen. Try and get some sleep.”

“See you soon.”

 

* * *

 

_Tuesday, 20 August, 05:10_

 

An hour before sunrise, Border Police came in and pulled out three of their number. One was a refugee, but the other two were not. The entire affair was conducted with loud voices and excess violence, raising everyone in the enclosure out of the camp beds and into the open area between the tents.

If the purpose was to rile everyone up, it was achieved perfectly. Sam watched the upset men pace and argue, and knew what was coming. Everyone had been still rattled when they’d gone to sleep: the previous day’s merry-go-round of interviews had achieved that effectively. Those who had something to hide were wary of having been caught out. Last night the suspiciousness was limited to dark looks and snide comments. Now, though -

Naturally there were no guards around when the violence broke out. Of course there weren’t.

Sam counted four on one; not as bad as it could be. He didn’t try to break the beating up. Instead, he got in the way of those who would join it. The trick was to not actually push or shove anyone. Shoving was one of the quickest ways to escalate a fight, as people always shoved back harder. Careful as he was, this was guaranteed to turn into a second fight very quickly unless -

“Aziz! Haile!” Abu Adel snapped. “Dawit!” He walked straight into the middle of the scene and stood over the prone, moaning body of - Kidane. Of course it was Kidane: he was the youngest of their number, maybe a year older than Gurey, if that. It was easy to believe him the most vulnerable - and easy to turn others against: the fourth member in the lynch squad was Daahir.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Abu Adel demanded. Then he looked around. “All of you!”

“But -”

“Don’t tempt my patience, Haile.”

The crowd broke off in twos and threes. The last to remain watching were Sam - and Gurey. The kid was staring wide-eyed at the scene before him: the four men still breathing heavily, the boy his age curled on his side on the ground, and ‘Uncle’ with his feet planted a little more than shoulder-width, standing over the beaten boy.

“Salah,” Abu Adel said, addressing Sam, “look after my nephew. I -” he glared at the four men, “- have a situation to resolve.”

“Of course,” Sam agreed. He stepped closer to Gurey, but didn’t put his arm over the boy’s shoulder; Gurey was shaking as it was. “Gurey.”

“I -”

Gurey and Kidane, being that much younger than everyone else, shared a tent. _Had_ shared a tent. “Come with me,” Sam said. “Your uncle will come for you later.”

That did it: Gurey tore his eyes away from the scene of the attempted lynching and followed Sam, who headed for Abu Adel’s tent. He wanted as few people around Gurey as was possible, and that tent would be easier to clear out.

Gurey didn’t sit on any of the beds. Instead he sat down on the concrete slab, at the very back of the tent. At least he chose a position in front the tent’s entrance, and not all the way in the corner.

Sam sat down a few feet from him, careful to not block the boy. “Gurey,” he said, casting his voice very softly. “Are you all right?”

“Why did they do that? Kidane, he -”

Sam gave it a few seconds, then said: “They were probably afraid that he spoke to the guards.”

“What could he have _possibly_ told anyone that -” Gurey swallowed.

“Some people bring the things we fear with them, even to places supposed to be safe.” Sam watched carefully, waiting for the moment in which Gurey understood. “I’m sure Abu Adel will take care of it. It’s what your uncle does.”

“Yeah,” Gurey said after a moment. “Uncle takes care of people.”

“You should sleep.”

“I don’t want to.”

“It’s a while to sunrise, yet.”

Gurey twisted the hem of his sleeve. “I don’t feel like it.”

“Aren’t you talking to the social worker after breakfast? You should be at your best for that. You’re young, Gurey. This country could be good to you.”

“I know. I know that. I just - don’t feel like it.”

“I’m going to stay awake,” Sam said gently. “I know we don’t know each other very well, Gurey, but I made a promise to your uncle. No harm will come to you while I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

In the end he couldn’t talk Gurey into getting on one of the beds, but he did talk the kid into laying down; they brought a mattress down by the tent’s canvas. And if Gurey didn’t quite fall asleep, then at least he still remained close-eyed and still when Abu Adel finally came in.

“Is he asleep?” the cell’s leader asked.

“Yes,” Sam lied.

“Good, good. Thank you, Salah. The boy is dear to me.” Abu Adel sat down on the ground. “That is not good, what happened with Kidane.”

“The men are nervous.”

“They need to be more disciplined than that.” Abu Adel shook his head. “It’s light already. I will need you at breakfast. The guards will not be happy, and the men will not be happy with that.”

“Of course. Whatever you need of me.”

 

* * *

 

_11:30_

 

Problem number one was figuring out what to say to Noam that wouldn’t get G punched in the face, or worse. Problem number two was cornering Noam. The first problem had kept G up at night but then, _something_ would’ve. The second problem - well, G was still working on that.

In the end, he got lucky.

He blinked up from the newspaper when Yael entered the conference room with - predictably - two coffees. “Aren’t you supposed to be playing Bad Cop?”

“The kid was rattled worse than intended overnight.”

“How bad?”

“Salvageable.”

G was pretty sure that in translation from Dunski to English, that meant she was concerned with the kid killing himself if pressed too hard. He wasn’t going to outright ask, though. Instead, he pushed himself up. “I’ll be back in a a bit. Don’t steal my newspaper.”

“Are you seriously reading [Yisrael Hayom](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_HaYom)?”

“The propaganda is almost cute.”

“Find a copy of [Vesti ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesti_%28Israeli_newspaper%29)on your way back.”

“I’ll endeavor to do so.”

Once in the hallway, G picked the direction he was pretty sure Yael had come from and started walking. This was his window to catch Noam alone. It would last for as long as it took Yael to finish that coffee, so probably only about seven minutes. He was looking for anywhere Noam might’ve gone, on his first few moments to himself since they left Tel Aviv that morning -

There. G had gotten lucky: he spotted Noam snuffing out a cigarette and walking into a bathroom. Now all G needed was for the bathroom to be otherwise empty.

He followed the other man in.

All the stall doors were pushed open, showing that the stalls were empty. This was no coincidence: Noam was standing by the sink, and the tap was not running. _Fucking hell._ Noam had spotted him coming - or worse, noticed his attention on the drive south - and engineered this situation. G wasn’t used to being caught out like this; he wouldn’t still be alive if getting caught was a thing that happened to him with any frequency. Now he could pretend away Noam’s clear _Well then?_ body language, or he could lean on it.

Leaning on it was less likely to lose Noam’s attention. It was an effort not to put on his friendly face, but he had no illusions about how badly Noam would react to it. “Did anybody ever tell you that you’re as bad as she is? Because you’re a real matched set.” _Which is, coincidentally, what I wanted to talk about_ \- but he’d lose Noam if he gave that away right now. It was better to capitalize on the tiny bit of ground he just won; apparently no, no one had ever told Noam that he and Yael complemented one another.

“I know you care about her. And I know how she’s explaining it.” Vocabulary, vocabulary: Noam has been actively hiding his interest, and he’d been doing so in response to Yael’s unspoken wish. Either calling it out in an emotionally-laden language or saying anything dismissive about Yael would be a really bad idea. “I’m also pretty sure she’s wrong.” She was definitely wrong, or Noam wouldn’t be still listening - and he was. Any moment now, though, he’d remember everything G _knew_ Noam learned from watching professional manipulators at their job. G had to keep moving quickly and not pushing too far.

The latter was about to become a real problem.

“She’s not going to touch you while there’s even the semblance of an authority - I got a _real_ close look at how seriously she takes some things, okay?” G could wince over the vulnerability in his voice later - right now it was the only reason Noam was still there. “I mean literally, touch. Even just come close enough to.” He could practically _see_ Noam rifling through memories in his mind, considering evidence for or against G’s claim.

“And that’s all you need,” G said, a little softer. “I don’t need to tell you there’s no lying to her, that close. And that close, she’s not going to lie to herself, either.” The best case scenario was more than “not lie”; the best case scenario was something like that moment in the hotel room, the one G had been trying so hard to not think about. He was pretty damn sure Yael wasn’t going to turn away from being genuinely _welcome._ “I know that’s a risk, and I’m not telling you what to do here, but - it’s at least a chance.”

He could tell the exact second Noam remembered what G was, considered the possibility that this was a play - and then, improbably, set it aside enough to still stand there.

“Why do you care?” Noam asked. His tone was flat, but it was unmistakably a challenge.

_Because her kind gets under my skin and she’s really something, and if I can believe she’s with you the what-ifs won’t drive me crazy._ “I’d kind of like to think we’re friends.”

Judging by Noam’s soft snort, he figured out what G didn’t say: _Otherwise I’d probably go crazy at this point._ All he said, though, was: “Don’t talk to me again.”

G took a deep breath as soon as he was sure Noam was gone. He was tempted to lean against the wall. This was one of the stupider things he’d done in a while. He could think of any number of people who would read him the riot act over it. The only one of them who was ever going to find out was Sam - maybe Michelle, if Sam decided to tell her. Sam’s wife G could live with.

He’d probably never find out if Noam and Yael would make it work. He really hoped they would.

 

* * *

 

_15:30_

 

There had been no point during the day at which it became obvious that something was coming. The random-seeming interviews continued as they had the day before. The arbitrariness was an illusion: when the mass of guards came in to remove the remaining terrorists, the ones most likely to turn to violence were already gone. So were the most vulnerable of the refugees.

That wasn’t kindness. That was a mockery of it.

The guards who walked him off weren’t different than any of the others Sam had seen over the past few days. The hallway didn’t seem any different, either, but the man waiting in front of the interview room’s door was. Six feet tall, medium build, close-cropped dark blond hair and steel eyes. The stance and the clothes were what gave him away as Shin-Beit Security: tan cargo sleeveless jacket, a black shirt and grey cargo pants. It occurred to Sam that he’d seen this man before, at a distance: this was one of the two guards who had accompanied Dunski two days before.

He didn’t open the door to let Sam into the interview room until the prison guards were gone. Inside, Dunski was indeed waiting alongside with G.

“Complications?” she asked.

“None,” Sam replied.

She nodded and walked past him.

Sam turned to keep sight of her, and said: “Removing the injured ones.”

She stopped.

“Do you tell yourself that was kindness?” It was a petty question, he knew, but he was tired, and Dunski wasn’t a stranger.

“It wasn’t meant as kindness,” she replied.

“Then what was it _meant_ to be?”

“A safety measure.”

She left before Sam could find an appropriate retort.

“Come on, big guy,” G said. Sam turned around to face his partner. G had picked up the bag of clothes that had been laying on the table and tossed that at him.

“That wasn’t kindness, G.” G probably knew that, but Sam needed to say that anyway: “Kindness isn’t possible in this kind of a place.”

“What would you prefer, Sam? That they’d let a riot happen?”

“I’d prefer people owned up to how much pain…” _we’re causing._ The words died on Sam’s lips.

G huffed. “You seriously need to get changed. And not start any more fights.”

He’d feel better once he changed clothes. He’d feel better once he had a proper shower, with soap that wasn’t a miserable tiny scrap. Knowing his partner, G probably had three different plans for dinner tonight, all of them artery-blocking and at least one of them including steak. The burning frustration he was feeling would fade into a dull background not-ache - if not in a few hours, then in a few days. Sam knew that, and he was going to resent that, too, while the emotion was still bright.

“Since when do you tell me to stay out of fights, huh, G?” Sam asked.

G must’ve been expecting that question - probably gave Sam the serve deliberately - because there was no delay before he replied: “Since we only got one car, and it’s going to be a long drive to Tel Aviv if you do.”

Something about the tone of G’s voice made Sam give his partner a closer look. “Did you start any fights already?”

“Is that how you know me?”

“That’s exactly how I know you. Don’t give me that look.”

“I’m wounded.”

Sam sighed. “I’m going to change clothes - and those had better not be those skinny Israeli jeans you’re wearing, G -”

“- they’re straight-leg, not skinny, and they’re much more comfortable then y-”

“- and _then,_ ” Sam said, very firmly, “you can tell me all about that fight you didn’t start.”

“It wasn’t a fight.”

“Now why doesn’t that make me feel any better?”

“Probably because you know me.”

Sam sighed again.

 

* * *

 

_17:00_

 

He’d been in Israel once before. That hadn’t been a particularly long stay, and Sam hadn’t the chance to see much of the country. He was surprised by how much the scenery on the drive north from K’tzi’ot resembled the way he’d imagined it: green mixing into the beige, the sharp white lines of vaguely Bauhaus-inspired homes providing definition to an otherwise uniform open space studded with boys and their goats. The green and the beige reached equilibrium around Be’er Sheva. As they approached Quiryat Gat interchange only a few minutes later, the sides of the road became covered in trees. Sam turned his head to look: the distances between the trees were uneven, indicating that this was a natural forest and not planted by men.

Israel didn’t really have sprawl, Sam noticed; even the small towns had the houses relatively close together. He wondered if that was an issue of limited space, or a holdover from small towns having been frontline strongholds just a few decades before; _maybe both._ North of Sorek, things changed again: the towns became bigger and the distances between them decreased dramatically. Still, signs of settlement were far enough from the road to create the illusion of open space. But as they continued north, the illusion was quickly compromised.

It was at about that point Sam noticed some sort of an argument between Dunski and the Security guy whose name nobody had thought to mention. The argument was completely silent and only barely visible, making it difficult to tell what it was about. Sam glanced at G; his partner had had longer to watch those people. G seemed more amusedly resigned than anything else, so Sam figured that whatever this was, it wasn’t an actual problem.

At Nesharim interchange, Security - who was driving - took the exit lane. They didn’t get off the highway: the same lane led to the [rest area](http://i815.photobucket.com/albums/zz80/hagar972/Fic%20Things/DorAlonNaansunsetlight_zps07295674.png). They didn’t make a stop, though: they just switched drivers. The reason for Security’s scowl and G’s amusement became apparent as soon as Dunski shifted the gear out of parking.

At that point they’d been on the road for almost two hours. If Dunski hadn’t taken the wheel it would’ve easily taken them another hour to reach their destination, given the traffic on Route 1, then Ayalon - Israel had highways like it had rural areas, which was _not at all_ \- and then inside Tel Aviv.

“She just might be the only driver on earth worse than you,” Sam announced as soon as G and he were left on their own on in the quiet little side-street.

“You never get to complain about my driving ever again,” G declared as he keyed open the building door.

“That’s right,” Sam agreed, following him in. “But that’s because I never let you drive.”

Sam was right: a proper shower made all the difference. He was also right that G _definitely_ had plans for dinner. Those plans had to be particularly artery-clogging, too, because G was willing to walk to wherever they were going - suggested it, even, despite that even at last light and within eyesight of the beach the sea breeze didn’t have Tel Aviv humidity beat. Sam didn’t mind walking a pleasant city mile to get dinner, but this wasn’t really G’s style.

“Please tell me this place serves any kind of vegetable other than home fries.”

“Sam, this is Israel. I don’t think they’re capable of serving _anything_ without a fresh vegetable salad.”

G didn’t lie - and Sam wasn’t wrong, either: almost every single plate Sam spotted as they walked in had eggs on, whether served with brioche or with steaks. Sam opted for the steak; G, unsurprisingly, went for the pancakes.

“What?” he demanded in response to Sam’s look. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find pancakes in Tel Aviv?”

“Harder than finding a bacon cheeseburger?”

“A lot harder.”

Sam had a horrible suspicion. “Did you ask Dunski where to find pancakes in Tel Aviv?”

“No, Sam, I asked the cashier at the convenience store.”

“You asked…”

“Israelis, Sam: always ready to help.” He munched on a bit of fruit. “Did I mention our fridge is empty?”

By the time they walked back it was completely dark and had been for a while, but the streets weren’t any less crowded. That didn’t really surprise Sam; he’d never met an Israeli who didn’t claim that they could sleep when they’re dead. He was only partially surprised to discover Israeli convenience stores had [more produce than snacks](http://www.de-design.co.il/sites/default/files/imagecache/client_image/am_pm3_0.JPG) \- and entirely unsurprised that G had apparently mentioned the empty fridge exactly when he did so he could lead Sam to this discovery.

They never did this the other way around, with G undercover for weeks or months and Sam monitoring from the side, and that wasn’t because Sam’s areas of speciality were more likely to be needed for those kinds of ops. Early on, it was because G didn’t do so well with the longer assignments; too many of those had gone bad on him, and that had been the result of bad partners or bad handlers too many times. These years later G would be all right with that, but Sam wasn’t, anymore. It wasn’t unlike how upset he’d been, when Michelle had to go back to the field for that one op. Michelle was magnificent, but she was also _his wife,_ and there was only so much danger Sam could handle the people he loved being in, even if they were competent and every risk was calculated.

Sam couldn’t handle what the longer assignments did to G. G was handling what the longer assignments did to Sam as if that had never been a problem.

As Sam glanced up from picking tomatoes to prevent his errant partner from buying approximately four pounds of Bamba - Bamba filled with cream of Bamba, what on _earth_ \- Sam thought that G preferred this division of labour, too.

 

* * *

 

_Thursday, August 22, 17:15_

 

Dance music blared through the small apartment as half-dozen _sadirnikim_ went about the weekly cleaning, shouting at each other over the beat. The din covered the sound of approaching footsteps; Yael caught movement out of the corner of her eye and lifted her gaze only a split-second before Noam knocked on the open door.

“May I?” he asked.

The knock was a formality: he knew he had her attention before then. The question emphasized that. Noam was sending up every possible flag that this wasn’t a casual conversation.

_Five o’clock on the fifth day._ Of course it was.

“Close the door,” she said, acknowledging that she noticed the signals.

Noam left the door leaning against the frame, but not properly closed. That was its own signal: either that this conversation wasn’t quite what Yael thought it was going to be - what Noam thought she thought this conversation going to be, as she told him to close the door, went behind her desk but remained standing; or perhaps this was an apology of sorts, _I’m sorry for your discomfort._

The former was more likely; the latter wasn’t Noam’s style.

“I asked for a transfer.”

_That_ was unexpected. She hadn’t expected this until after the Holidays, at the earliest. There had been no sign of the kind of tension she’d’ve expected to precede that decision - it was absent even at the moment.

_Not the conversation you thought you’d be having._

Noam continued. “I’m going to go through with it either way. It’s not conditional on anything. But, once it goes through…” And there was that tension, the break she expected, but it was accompanied by the calm of a person who’d thought this through.

“Could we go out for coffee?” Noam finished quietly.

It was the tone of his voice that really got her attention. He meant it all the way down to the bone when he said, _Not conditional on anything._ She could refuse him the coffee date and he wouldn’t look back.

She probably wasn’t going to refuse him that. There was no risk in it, and she _liked_ him. He was more attentive, a little quicker and smoother, even before his interest solidified.

And he already knew everything that would make most people run away from her, whether as simple as her hours or as complicated as the content of her work.

She came around the desk.

She’d never come close enough to feel. That wasn’t particular to him; she was aware enough of people as it was, and didn’t usually miss getting any closer. The exceptions were family, the office kids - her soldiers, when she’d been in uniform - and people she intended to have sex with. And, right now, Noam.

This close, she could tell how painfully aware of her he was _._ This wasn’t a crush, had never _been_ a crush; _too much power_ \- except Noam was aware of this, too.

It took trust as much as affection to try. They both had that. Everything else, they would have to find out.

“Okay,” she said. The smile was her real smile, not any of the ones she had for show; it came out as slow and lopsided as it had for years, held back too many times. “Coffee it is.”

 


End file.
